Students and professors booking meeting rooms on campus will no longer be judged by the rapidity of their reservation but by the importance of their event.
Ohio University’s Event Services team has been working during the past year to reform its event-reservation process to create a more efficient and user-friendly experience. The new system will prioritize events by type and importance rather than the order in which they are scheduled.
For instance, events organized by and geared toward OU students will hold precedence over events primarily geared toward Athens residents.
There are about 15,000 reservations made each year for Baker University Center alone, said Sujit Chemburkar, director of Baker University Center and Event Services.
“It’s challenging to plan major events on this campus,” Chemburkar said.
The current Event Services online reservation system is used to book event spaces in all major venues on campus, including select Baker Center spaces, Galbreath Chapel, Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium and Walter Hall Rotunda.
After reviewing customer-service feedback and researching other universities’ event-booking systems, the executive staff has chosen to say goodbye to the current first-come, first-serve booking process to opt for a more selective approach.
Annual university events such as Homecoming will be booked before the new system comes into effect.
“These are things that we feel, as a university, we have to commit to,” Chemburkar said.
Beginning March 7, all other university organizations and public clients will be able to put in requests for spaces through the new reservation system. Reservations will be made based on their category and the order of submission.
Events will be placed in A, B and C categories, based on who will attend the event and who at the university it will affect. The Event Services staff plans to have all reservation inquiries submitted after March 7 on the schedule within three weeks.
“I think this brings a structure to the process,” Chemburkar said.
In addition to its goal of increased efficiency, Event Services revamped the system to accommodate the upcoming switch to semesters. The process will encourage people who want to book reservations to plan their events ahead.
“Student organizations and departments need to start thinking about what events they are going to have next year,” said Beverley Wyatt, associate director of operations for Event Services. “We are going to be on a whole different calendar.”
To learn how to use the new system, students and faculty can attend one of the training sessions Event Services is holding in February.
“I think this is the best way to increase our efficiency,” said Dustin Kilgour, associate director of operations for Event Services.
hm156809@ohiou.edu
