Rethinking Special Event Coordination in Higher Education
How colleges and universities can bring greater coordination, visibility, and consistency to complex campus events.
Colleges and universities host an extraordinary range of special events. Student organization activities, lectures, performances, conferences, athletic events, fundraisers, major celebrations, and events open to the surrounding community are all part of campus life.
Behind those events is an increasingly complex coordination challenge.
An event taking place in one campus location may require participation from public safety, facilities, parking and transportation, risk management, fire and life safety, venue management, food service, athletics, student affairs, and other departments. Construction activity may affect access. Parking may already be committed. An event may introduce additional safety, insurance, accessibility, alcohol, or operational requirements.
The coordination challenges surrounding campus events share many similarities with those found in municipal special event permitting, where multiple departments and partner agencies may each have an independent role in reviewing and approving an event.
“Eproval was originally developed to help cities manage special event permitting processes that crossed traditional departmental boundaries,” says Jonathan Thompson, CEO of Eproval. “As we began working with colleges and universities, we recognized that the fundamental challenge was the same: one event, multiple areas of responsibility, and a need to bring all of those independent reviews together through a coordinated process.”
The Campus Adds Another Layer of Complexity
Higher education also presents challenges that are less pronounced in the municipal environment.
Students graduate. Leadership within student organizations changes. Faculty and staff take on new responsibilities. Outside organizations may be unfamiliar with campus requirements. As a result, many people organizing events may be navigating the process for the first time.
The process cannot depend on applicants already knowing which requirements apply, what information is needed, or which departments need to be involved. Technology can instead guide applicants based on the activities associated with their event, helping them provide the appropriate information while creating a more consistent experience from one academic year to the next.
That consistency also matters to the institution. People change, but the college or university retains responsibility for the decisions made and the events taking place on its campus.
Coordination Is More Than Scheduling
Venue and calendar systems play an important role in campus operations, but an available space does not necessarily mean an event is ready to proceed.
The broader question is whether all of the operational and regulatory considerations surrounding the event have been identified and addressed.
“Space scheduling answers an important question: where and when can an event occur?” says Thompson. “Special event permitting addresses a different question: what needs to happen before that event can safely and successfully move forward?”
A coordinated permitting process allows individual departments to retain responsibility for their own areas of review while providing visibility across the event as a whole. Reviews can occur concurrently, outstanding requirements can be identified, and the institution can maintain a centralized record of applications, communications, reviews, documents, decisions, and approvals.
From Municipalities to the Campus Community
As colleges and universities look for better ways to manage special events, the lessons learned in municipal permitting offer a useful starting point.
The objective is not to create more process. It is to make an inherently complex process easier to navigate—for applicants and for the many campus departments responsible for supporting safe, successful events.
“We are seeing increasing interest from higher education because campuses are recognizing that special event permitting is fundamentally a coordination challenge,” says Thompson. “When the right people receive the right information at the right time, institutions can improve the applicant experience, strengthen accountability, and reduce the operational risks created by fragmented processes.”
For colleges and universities, that may be the most important lesson from cities: effective special event management is not the responsibility of a single department. It is a shared institutional responsibility—and the process used to coordinate it matters.
