After receiving the bid at the Mini No-Frills conference in March, Geneseo will now host the North Eastern Affiliate of College and University Residence Halls Regional Conference Nov. 16 – 18. According to the organization’s website, NEACURH is a suborganization of the National Association of College and University Residence Halls. Delegates from participating schools attend regional conferences to promote programming for residence halls.
Ten representatives from Geneseo attended the Mini No-Frills conference for NEACURH over spring break and presented a bid to host the regional conference.
Juniors Casey Howard and Silvia Roma, Geneseo’s national communication coordinators for NEACURH, decided to create the bid for hosting and will be the conference’s co-chairs.
Roma explained that a bid to host a conference consists of letters from various professional staff supporting the conference, history of the college as well as its involvement with NEACURH, information about Inter-Residence Council and Residence Life, biographies of the conference staff, a schedule of events for the conference, key information about the conference and the conference’s budget.
The process of creating a bid usually starts two years before the desired conference, with a presentation the year before the conference.
“Casey and I did what most people do in two years in about 3 1/2 weeks,” Roma said.
Usually a special team is selected to work on the bid, but given the time restraints, the other eight representatives helped Howard and Roma prepare the bid while working on programs for the conference.
The other representatives included juniors Carly Annable, Andrew Nicholson and Jacqueline Tang; sophomores Marie Dempsey, Olivia Kelly and Michelle Walpole; and freshmen Billy Fagan and Kristina Tricomi. Area Coordinator of Seneca and Ontario Halls Victoria Briars advised them.
Although many of the representatives were new to NEACURH, Howard and Roma both said they were highly enthusiastic, allowing the team to bring the bid to a whole new level.“While some schools use skits, we chose a straightforward presentation to illustrate that we took seriously how much work went into a conference,” Howard said.
At the banquet, Geneseo was announced as the host of the conference. According to Roma, Geneseo was the only school to present a bid, but that did not ensure that it would be accepted.
“Once they started to talk about regionals [at the banquet] we knew we got it,” Roma said. “Right then we started crying with joy because all of our hard work paid off and we would be hosting regionals.”
Now that Geneseo will be hosting the NEACURH regional conference, the work of Howard, Roma and the representatives will be transferred over to an elected conference staff.
The theme of the conference is Mooselodeon, which is a pun based on the combination of the NEACURH mascot, Marty the Moose and Nickelodeon.
Sophomore and Volunteer Chair Sherry Leung still needs volunteers for the conference. Applications to volunteer are available at tinyurl.com/mooselodeonvolunteer.