MOST OUTSTANDING NEW EVENT NOMINEE
Loyola Asian Student Organization
Progression to Profession
Provide a detailed description of the event and the population it served. Details MUST include: date of event, number of participants, program purpose (goals, objectives, etc.), use of resources (finances, community support, etc.), and marketing techniques.
This year, LASO wanted to start incorporating more serious themes into our events. On October 18th we held Progression to Profession, an event in which four VSA alumni came and spoke to us about the importance of heritage and unity in VSA. We had eighteen people participate in total, this smaller turnout actually enabled us to have more in depth conversations. Progression to Profession provided the participants with a look into the past of VSA and how it has changed over the years. We really wanted to provide our members, and other VSA members, with the ability to ask questions to alumni about professionalism and learn how their Asian heritage can be used as empowerment in the workplace. This was one of our longest events, about 3 hours, so we had a ten minute break in between our questions. We used our finances in order to provide Cane’s for the participants during this break. Marketing techniques included creating posters and placing them around campus, creating an event on Facebook, and spreading the event by word of mouth.
What inspired your organization to create this new event?
With the guidance of Duy, the other presidents in GC, and our senior/faculty advisors, we wanted to create an event that not only worked to portray movement from college life to professionalism through LASO and VSA, but we also wanted to have an event where we could connect with our alums, an aspect that we saw LASO lacking in the past. We didn't want our members to only look into the future, but to also show them how impactful VSA could be on their lives based on how important it became through the lives of our alums.
What efforts were used to motivate and involve the organization's members?
Our executive board really informed our members and other VSA’s about this new event. LASO wanted to promote this event as a step towards professionalism and more serious conversations.
Did the organization overcome any challenges that arose while planning and implementing the event? How?
During the event we discovered that we were behind schedule. We had to shorten question time and choose to focus more on what the alumni had to say as opposed to giving participants more free time to talk among themselves.