5 Essential Skills of a University Event Coordinator

What are the 5 skills every university event coordinator must have?

Well, read below to find out!

#1 Be approachable by students and faculty by being innovative and tech-savvy

A university event coordinator needs to be easily approachable by members of the university — and have close ties with student unions and clubs. That’s the meaning of event coordinator we believe in. In fact, being tech-savvy has its advantages as you consider using an online event calendar where all students can search and find events. 

Timely has a centralized event management system, so you can have all university departments' websites connected, and manage all event calendars from one single software, managing permissions according to the users' roles.

People need to know how to contact you whenever they wish to promote an event. After all, planning an event takes a lot of effort and nobody wants to see it flop with no attendees.

With Timely, you can make event submissions easy with the university event management software. All they need to do is fill in a form and then you can include the event on the official university calendar!

Many universities have events with low attendance not because the speakers are not experts, topic is not interesting, or organizers are not skilled, but because nobody even hears about them. Students have so many things on their minds already and they’ll go to the events that reach out to them — not those they have to chase after.

So, with a submission form, you can create a channel that’s easy for anyone to submit an event. Simply tell leaders of student unions, departments, and clubs about the form to start raking in events for your calendar!

And you can even use our ticketing service so they don’t need to reserve tickets from third-party websites.

Check out our event calendar software.

#2 Be an event curator (and a good newsletter writer) with our Event Finder tool

Being a curator is a job in itself, but having curating skills will make your events get more attendees.

Time.ly allows you to find and import events from several sources, including our own network of calendars, Facebook, EventBrite and Meetup. You can include, in the university calendar, interesting events that are happening in the community to inform your students.

The key is to organize events by category and even personalize the newsletters you send according to each university department. After all, an engineering student will probably have more interest in a robotics seminar than an art student.

Make your newsletters weekly. Monday for example is a good day for event newsletters — it’s the start of the week and students want to plan ahead what they’ll be doing.

And yes, there is a thing as sending too many emails. If students receive daily event alerts, they’ll probably start to ignore them.

With Timely, you can integrate the event calendar into your email or your MailChimp account, making it easy for students to check out what’s happening. 

#3 Be a facility manager

But wait, isn’t an event manager only supposed to care about events? Well, in a university the facilities become “events” too, and as the event coordinator, it is your responsibility to be on top of that as well.

That’s because two different groups of people can’t use the same place at the same time. Let’s say for example you have study rooms in your university library.

These study rooms need to be booked, correct? Otherwise, people will head to the study rooms disappointed only to find them packed. The same goes for conference rooms, as well as most sports facilities (basketball courts, fitness rooms, etc).

So, use event booking software to have a place that faculty can use to reserve these facilities. You’ll be making everybody’s life way easier if you become a “facility manager” as well.

#4 Make it easy for parents to see what’s happening at university

Of course students deserve their privacy. But that doesn’t mean you should leave parents in the dark about what's happening with their precious sons and daughters at university.

Besides, many events can have the attendance of parents, so why not give them the chance to join in and say hello?

With Timely calendar, you can give parents the chance to see the main events at university.

#5 Be an organized, timely person

If there’s any skill an event manager must have it’s being organized and timely. It’s your job to make all university events easy for students to join.

It’s your job to make sure every event gets the attention it deserves and that no event becomes a flop. Your role is to make the university an enriching experience with events that will form precious memories.

So, perform your role with software by your side — event planning software created to make that an easy achievement.

Plan a better event with Time.ly today!