GUIDANCE :: Approvals

Overview

Nearly all events that fall within the scope covered by the CPES Operations Guidelines require the approval of the dean of one of the colleges at Mines. The specific process that must be followed to secure approval for your event may vary depending upon the policies of the dean of the college that will be associated with the event and also by the type of the event. This portion of the Guidance will discuss only a general process.

For some deans and for some events, the approval process can be begun, tracked, and completed using a single form: the Dean's Checklist, which can be obtained from the Forms page of the Reference section of this website. Even if the dean associated with your event chooses to use a different process, a review of the Dean's Checklist can provide you with some useful information and insight.

Preparing for the dean

Since the dean will be both reputationally and financially responsible for the event being proposed, you can expect to be required to furnish detailed information about the objective, content, intended audience, scheduling, location, and marketing of the event. The dean will want — possibly at various points and with varying levels of detail — financial information, such as whether the attendees will be charged a fee, how much the fee will be, will different fees apply to different types of attendees, will the event solicit funds from sponsors, what total amount of sponsorship funds will be expected, how much total revenue is expected, what costs will the event incur (for example, venue rental, instructor compensation, catering, and more). Clearly, you will need at least a preliminary budget for the event, and will likely need a detailed budget before final approval is granted.

You should expect that the dean will require a schedule for the event, again possibly both a preliminary and a final schedule. The schedule should consider, of course, the dates of the event itself, but also should include the time before the event, during which all of the "up front" activities are performed, such as planning, marketing, website development, engagement of instructors or session chairs, collection and review of papers that are to be presented, and much more. The schedule should include post-event tasks such as Proceedings publication and distribution, settlement of accounts, solicitation of feedback from attendees, and more.

The dean will surely want to know more about the event itself: why do you want to conduct the event, what is its purpose, who will attend, how wll the attendees (and Mines!) benefit from the event? You should be prepared to furnish all of that sort of information.

CPES will help!

Don't despair! While all of the above may sound like a daunting task, CPES will help you work through it. We will help you identify the college and dean that would be most likely to support your event, and we will work with you to develop your budgets and schedules. After all, we have more than 30 years of experience in successfully staging hundreds of events at Mines and other locations, so we can guide you through the hurdles with the least possible pain — and the greatest likelihood of success.