INVOLVEMENT/ROLES: Artist, Researcher, Writer, Event Planner

Break the Mold (BTM) is an event proposal that was sent into the PCMA Student Competition Spring 2021. This proposal was against over 20 other teams within North America and won 4th place.

The theme for this competition was “Recovery Discovery”. During the climate of our society, my team decided to curate an event that emphasized on immersion with diversity and inclusion inhigher education. The challenge was due to COVID how could we make an event better/the “new normal”.

The plan for BTM was to be hosted at the University of California - Santa Barbara. The purpose of the event was to educated Student Affairs Professionals (SAP) through immersion of how to plan experiential and immersive events that embody diversity, inclusion, and student involvement. To implement storytelling at this event, SAP will experience their stakeholder’s shadow and undergo that story of three different college students, reflect on their experience and attempt to curate an event that caters to those 3 students. Then those students will attend what was created and provide feedback in which will give SAP the realization that they are generalizing their students when it came to event design.

I was very proud of how my team and I presented this proposal entry. It was presented as if each stakeholder was writing a journal entry about their lives and the proposal was a novel of journals of three different perspectives: student, student affairs professional, and event planner.

To make things even more interesting, our presentation wasn’t a powerpoint. We presented our proposal as if it was on a News Channel.