Guest Professional Dinners, those dinners in the south end of the dining hall that non-business majors are perennially confused about, are now BEST Talks. The acronym stands for Business, Education, Science, and Technology.
The dinners, which feature alumni and friends of the college speaking on how their career has benefitted from a liberal arts education, and which offer opportunities for students to network with potential employers, are being given the facelift to broaden their appeal beyond the business department.
The Office of Advancement, which organizes the events with assistance from the Office of Vocation and Calling (formerly VOCA), began considering a rebrand in the fall semester. Originally, the team spearheading the shift considered the name “JED Talks,” which Emily Vandenbosch of Advancement says was intended to be a play on the popular TED Talks, and was to stand for Journey, Explore, Develop.
Karl Sisson, Vice President for Advancement and External Engagement, however, was eager to open the process to students. Seeing the efforts of Jared Couch and Joseph Gross starting the student section for sports games known as ‘The Den,’ and noticing their presence at Guest Professional Dinners, he reached out to them to see if they could work their student-engagement magic.
He also contacted Professor Joseph Miller, who in turn reached out to Noah Miller (’20), president of Houghton Student Enterprises and founder and CEO of Griddle Studios, encouraging him to get involved in the rebranding process through either HSE or Griddle. Couch says, “Mr. Sisson had reached out to Joey [Gross] and I, as well as Noah Miller, in the hopes that we could offer some insight to the students’ perspective of the Guest Professional Dinner rebrand.”
In a January 21st meeting with Sisson, Couch, Gross, Dennis Stack of the Office of Vocation and Calling, and others, Miller pitched his branding proposal. It included the new name, BEST Talks, with the promise of logo and poster designs handled by Griddle going forward.
Griddle’s proposal was warmly welcomed by the team. Sisson called it “wonderful” that students were getting involved in the process, saying of the name “if that’s what students are putting forward, great!” Stack, too, expressed excitement, saying “[Griddle] explained [their proposal] quite well, I thought, and with a lot of confidence I might add. And the vice president liked it, and I think just about everybody else did too.”
Gross expressed gratefulness for Miller’s expertise, saying he “has truly been an amazing benefit to this project with his knowledge of business, marketing, and his graphic design abilities.”
Miller, not any Griddle team, will be handling the actual design work going forward. According to Miller, Griddle, which has operated as a student business providing graphic design internships, is in the process of restructuring to become a kind of middleman between independent contractors and students who need experience. His role in designing branding for the BEST Talks will be, in Miller’s words, “the test run for the independent contractor idea.”
This is not the first time Sisson has pushed to rebrand the dinners. When he started working at Houghton, he said, they were called Guest Executive Dinners. Since that had become inaccurate – the guests are by no means all executives – and since it sounded exclusive and only relevant for business majors, Sisson changed the name to Guest Professional Dinners. The hope was to broaden their appeal beyond the business department. He says that while attendance has gone up since that initial rebrand, they still draw predominantly business majors.
Stack, however, mentioned that last semester some of the talks were held in other spaces because they were unable to fill the South End.
This time, then, the primary focus is on bringing in students from a wider range of majors, not just increasing attendance. Sisson says he hopes faculty from all departments will begin attending the talks, see the value in them, and then encourage and incentivize their students to attend, much as the business department already does.
Stack, whose Office of Vocation and Calling runs the annual Sophomore Leadership Conference, remarked that the personal invitation faculty and staff can give students to attend the conference is a significant factor in many of the students’ decision to attend, and hopes the direct invitation approach will translate to BEST Talks.
Sisson hopes that all students, even those not going into a professional field, will go to at least one BEST Talk. While the new name suggests a broader array of students who could benefit from it, Sisson says even a theology major could grow from attending one: “What is a theology major? What are the challenges that they have once they’re actually in a local church? It’s the management of people. It’s the psychology that’s beneficial. It’s ‘how do I manage the business components of this? How do I utilize the technology appropriately.’ All of those things are overlapping.”
Sisson also emphasized that the program is open to community members as well, including the “about 200 local seniors” enrolled in the newly-launched Encore program.
Elijah Tangenberg (‘20), a political science major who has not attended Guest Professional Dinners, said that while he’s often interested in the mission of speakers’ companies, he usually gets the impression from advertising materials that “they’re going to talk about the PR or management side of it, not actually what the company does.” Tangenberg thought he’d find the dinners more attractive if advertising materials didn’t lead him to conclude that they’re mostly about the day-to-day functioning of a particular business. The status quo, he says, is “a little too nitty-gritty for me.”
Seth Feldman (‘22), who also has never attended the dinners, has a different perspective. He feels that the dinners have not been well-publicized and information about the speakers and their backgrounds has not been made easily accessible. Feldman says, “If there was, like, more information provided on who’s speaking… if they had something more in advance,” he would feel better informed to make a decision about attending.
Skylar Hillman (‘20), while agreeing with Sisson that the dinners are open to students of all majors, questions the importance of trying to cater to a broader audience. “The idea that it appears that it’s only for business majors,” Hillman says, “Well, that’s not true. Anyone’s welcome.” But he continues, “why don’t you rebrand the lyric theater to make it more [open]?
I mean, Guest Professional Dinners will almost inevitably appeal more to business students, but still being open to anyone.”
As far as possible next steps, Sisson hinted at the possibility of more collaboration with Math & Science Colloquia and Mosaic Center Talk Backs. This, he said, was Miller’s idea: “Noah [Miller] said, ‘Hey, could you wrap in the Math & Science Colloquiums under the BEST umbrella?’ I said maybe, but I don’t have the time, now, to do that. But I can imagine that conversation between now and next fall.”
The first BEST Talk of the semester is on Tuesday, February 18 by Phil Warrick, an executive for an engineering firm who has also worked at ExxonMobil. It will be held in the South End of the dining hall. The dinner will begin at 5, and Warrick will give a presentation and answer questions from 5:30-6:15.