Behind The Scenes: With NAITsa

NAIT’s Student Association is already hard at work planning and executing all of this school year’s fun activities! Recently I had the pleasure of sitting down with NAITsa’s Campus Life Marketing Manager, Lindsay Jamieson who gave us a bit of a behind the scenes look into what work goes into these events. She touched on a few personal favourites as well, and shared some excitement on what’s coming up.

How does NAITsa decide what events they’re going to put on?

So every year we kind of look at what happened in the year past and see what did really well, what did students really like, whether we sold out of tickets, and what had really great reviews. And we try to see what we can keep consistent year over year. So you’ll notice there’s things in our calendar that stay pretty similar year to year, and we also leave room for our student staff to innovate and create new events each year. And those are some of the different things that we bring in. But we try to keep the things that we know will be successful year to year.

What kind of behind the scenes work goes into preparing for these events?

A lot. So depending on the event or the scale of the event, it could be anything from our student staff researching different vendors or people to help host. Whether it be like a DIY or how to event, we might need an instructor for it so they’ll spend time outreaching to those different people and seeing if they can support us in that, you know, booking space here on campus, gathering all the supplies required to make that event a reality. On my end, I will staff and market that event with student staff and then. There’s the actual executions, making sure that we sell all the tickets or have all the spots that students can RSVP fulfilled and then having those students actually show up on the day of and making sure that it goes off.

Out of all the different events NAITsa puts on during the school year, which one is your personal favorite?

I really like Nest fest. It’s obviously the biggest event of the year. Like from our standpoint, the amount of planning and labor that goes into it is a lot, but it’s also the best opportunity for first year students or students who have never been to campus before to really see what campus life is all about. And we do put a lot of time and energy into that event, to make it a success. So from my perspective it’s like the most satisfying at the end of the two days to see the results, and to see all the students we’ve been able to check in and bring through and to also see the students having a really great time and the most fun.

Are there any specific events that have consistently very good turnouts?

All of our how to events have a really great turn out. I think that year over year we try to give like a really diverse offering to students and give them things that they wouldn’t normally go out and experience on their own or invest the time and money in on experiencing on their own. So for example in a couple of weeks we have how to make jewelry which is like a really cool event that is kind of expensive, but our value for students is only $10.00. So they’re getting a lot of bang for their buck and they get to experience that. And then also our cooking events, every time we do a cooking event, it’s really, really fun. And last year we started a partnership with Sorrentino’s cooking classes and they have been able to offer students like a really great value. You know they give them a recipe card, help them figure out how to create later on, and I think that gives students some neat skills. They could take it with them later.

This past week, NAITsa has hosted a few pride events, what has been the feedback so far on those events?

We had pride dirty bingo yesterday and we had to cancel it because The Nest was closed last minute, but we’re moving it to next week. You know, I think the reason that we brought pride into the fall semester is that we want to make sure that students don’t just see that we host Pride one week a year in the winter semester. You know how this school is structured, there’s students who might be here for one semester or two semesters. It’s kind of all over the map. It’s not a traditional structure, but the feedback so far has been really good, and it is every year. I think it gives students a really great opportunity, whether you’re part of the 2SLGBTQIA community or not, just to have a welcoming and open space to hang out and get to.

All of these fun events do not take place without NAIT’s Student Association. The hard work, and planning from all of NAITsa’s staff and student volunteers doesn’t go unnoticed. A special thank you to Lindsay Jamieson, NAITsa’s Campus Life Marketing Manager for giving the behind the scenes look into what work goes into these student focused events.

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