By IAN FREETH
Preparing for Education Week takes a full year and every department on campus is put through its paces.
Neil Carlile, Director of Education Week, said “Department members from Continuing Education are assigned to work on the program all year round. Then during a two week period, which covers Education Week a further 50 full-time temporary people are employed.”
These people help with coordination of crowd control and faculty support. The services of the whole of campus are then utilized including, dining, media, employment, BYU security, custodial services, etc.
Preparing for an Education Week starts as soon as the current one is finished.
“As soon as this program concludes there are student evaluations that we read and review to see what changes we need to make the program better. Then in October we start making plans as to who we might like to invite for the next year.
We receive proposals from faculty members of BYU, the Church Educational System and other individuals who write and ask if we would be interested in certain topic areas,” said Carlile.
There are about 200 faculty members presenting the program every year and over a thousand classes to decide on and prepare for. Rooms then need to be scheduled and brochures need to be written.
Steve Baker, Manager of Parking and Traffic said, “Education Week for us started a few months ago. A lot of the departments meet together in advance so that we can make this a great week for visitors, and also for the faculty to help them function better.”
The Traffic Department also work more closely with the Police Department and the Continuing Education Department at this time of year. One of their priorities is to increase the medical assistance needed to cater for the extra people.
Due to the 200+ faculty and hundreds of BYU employers involved with Education Week the majority of parking spaces are already allotted. To help get visitors around the campus a shuttle service was started several years ago.
“Over the last few years Continuing Education has done an excellent job hiring bus shuttles. This has made the program run more smoothly, especially compared to several years ago,” said Baker.
The Wilkinson Center will also be back in form. Some of its areas have been out of action the last couple years due to its construction work.
Nancy Carson, Manager of Guest Services said, “We will have the traffic back in the building again. We have all of our areas open and set up that worked here before, like Campus Floral and Cougar Creations. Rooms will once again be used as classrooms.”
Guest services hire an on call temporary staff who work with their regular employees to drive the shuttle vans during Education Week.
“We start training drivers about two weeks before. This includes on the road driving, and various other obstacle courses and road safety,” said Carson.
Guest services also man the elevators to help the students get between floors. More people are also employed at the Information Desk to stay open longer and to help the extra crowds with any information they may need.
Education Week is a big program bringing at least 30,000 people to the campus every year and their needs are met by the whole of the University community.
