News > Asst Professor Completes Event Mgmt Certificate Programme
Assistant Professor Completes Event Management Certificate Programme For Assistant Professor Ruth Gardiner, Head of Department, Hospitality and Tourism Management, teaching courses in Event Management has always been a joy. Recently, she had the opportunity to switch her role in the classroom and become the student while participating in an Event Management Certificate Programme at the Arthur Lok Jack Graduate School of Business at The University of the West Indies, Trinidad. The Caribbean Tourism Organisation [CTO] selected her and 14 others to participate after receiving funding to provide sponsorship for candidates from CARIFORUM countries who were event management instructors or were working in the field. The programme is internationally recognized and according to Ruth, the coursework was grueling. "We were in class from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm and this was on weekends too, for 10 days," she recalls while adding that the coursework was theoretical and practical. The programme focused on areas like Best Practices in Event Management; Event Coordination; Event Marketing and Risk Management. Expertise in Event Management is crucially important as The Bahamas continues to host large events like Carifesta 2010 that is scheduled to be held here. The certificate programme is designed to accommodate both experienced and inexperienced event planners and is geared towards providing a solid foundation in this area. The classes are tailored to meet the needs of each student. The Centre for Training and Development at the University of the West Indies collaborated with The George Washington University to offer the programme. For Ruth, the most difficult part of the course was the capstone portfolio. It documented the actual event that the student helped to coordinate or manage. "For the portfolio you actually had to work an event... or hold an event and you had to utilise all of the concepts you would have learnt during the course," she adds. "It sounds easy, but it was pretty intense." Students were required to complete four core courses, three electives, 100 hours of practicum experience and a professional portfolio in one year. For her portfolio, Ruth worked on the Culinary and Hospitality Management Institute’s Annual Culinary Classics, an event she described as being different from the average portfolios she had researched in the Arthur Lok Jack library. "In looking through the portfolios I noticed that most of the events lacked a culinary perspective, so I decided to work on an event that had a culinary focus and it was no easy task at all," she says. However, she said she had extremely good team support. "Julia Burnside from the Ministry of Tourism who has done a number of these events, was a good source of information and guidance, and so was Chef Addiemae Farrington and Chef Mario Adderley. They contributed to making it smooth for me," she explains. Ruth completed the course and graduated in Summer 2008. She is currently the only faculty member at CHMI with an Event Management Certificate and she plans to put it to good use. "There are a few things I learned that I will introduce to my class, particularly concerning business events, conferences and conventions," she says. Ruth feels that these are the types of events on which most of her former students are working and would like to give her current students a head start, now that she is better trained in this area. She remains interested in learning more about event management and tourism studies. "There is a lot out there to learn concerning events and even with my certificate I don’t know everything. I am always on the look out for new and innovative courses to take and often I take my students along with me. I go to at least 3-4 conferences a year." Apart from the fifteen participants from the CARIFORUM countries who participated in the programme, there were approximately twenty others in the cohort. Ruth is scheduled to teach Special Events, Meeting and Convention Planning in the Spring Semester.
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