In addition to the usual resources we assemble twice a year to aid your career growth—scholarships, no/low-cost online education and live events—this edition of the Plan Your Meetings Professional Development Guide offers insight to some revolutionary and very important education opportunities for meeting and event professionals, whether students, young professionals or veterans.
A major development that’s finally taking shape this year: U.S.-based master’s degree programs in event management. Indeed, this high-level education boosts not only your professional standing but that of the meeting and event profession at large. To learn more about the course offered by New York University’s Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality, launching in September, we spoke with academic director Lynn Minnaert (“The Birth of an Event Management Master’s Program”).
Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to experience the three-day Event Design Certificate Program in Las Vegas. This highly focused process uses the #EventCanvas to map out the behavior changes you seek in affect in your attendees and stakeholders and determine how to make this change a reality. (Spoiler: I went in a skeptic and came out an evangelist.) This course was so much more than I expected, and I cannot recommend it enough!
Unlike most of the resources provided herein, neither the master’s nor event design programs are free—but that just means you need to utilize our scholarship resources we’ve assembled in the Professional Development Guide. It’s exciting to envision an industry made up of professionals who have been through these programs.
Career expert Dawn Rasmussen, CMP, also returns in this edition with a new column offering advice on “Shifting Gears: Making a Change Mid-Career.” And rest assured, elsewhere in this Professional Development Guide, you’ll find more of the updated essential goodness you’ve come to expect, including a free embedded webinar from the MPI Academy (“Five Keys to Cultivating Strong Partner Relationships”).
P.S. Don’t miss free education opportunities at Plan Your Meetings live events throughout North America—see future dates and register.
