Helping Make Biennial Happen: A Current Board Member’s Experience

By Hannah Marshall, 2019 Union Board Vice President of Internal Affairs

My name is Hannah Marshall and I am the Vice President of Internal Affairs of the 110^th Indiana Memorial Union Board. I am a senior at Indiana University studying Media, Advertising and Public Relations with a minor in Nonprofit Management. I started with Union Board the fall of my sophomore year as a committee member for the Comedy & Entertainment committee. My aunt is actually a Union Board alumni and was the Vice President of Membership for the 2010 board (Hi Clare!). She is the one who pushed me to be involved with the organization because she knew I would love it.

During my time as the Vice President, I have worked on a lot of different projects. I would say however the one that I am most proud of and worked hardest on was the 2019 Union Board Biennial Reunion. I started working closely on Biennial in May. I went abroad this summer and there were a few meetings that I had to Skype into. During those meetings, I was completely overwhelmed. I don’t think I really understood the importance or large scale of this event until those meetings.

Now that my term is coming to a close, I can say with full confidence that planning and helping to make Biennial weekend happen was the favorite Union Board experience. I loved hearing stories from all the alums about their experiences on board, their experiences in college, and what they are doing now. Like I said before, I’m a senior, so I received a lot of great advice about job exploration and honestly some reassurance that everything will be okay when I graduate (because when my mom says it, I don’t always believe it).

The panels were my favorite times of the weekend: the Panel of the Decades and the Career Panel. I had sent out so many emails to the people participating in these and it was incredible to actually put some faces to the names. The things that were said and the banter that was quickly created on both panels were better than I was expecting.

When I was first tasked with being the student voice throughout the Biennial planning I was terrified. Programming for students is one thing, but programming for people who used to program adds a new layer of expectations – AND I don’t even program often! But I learned so much throughout the process of working with so many different people and seeing all the aspects that go into a full weekend of events and sessions. A job that I’ve had an interest in for a long time is live event production and being the one to create weekend seminars like this for companies. After helping with Biennial, it has just piqued my interest even more, and after all the positive feedback that has been received from the weekend, it makes me think that it is something I would actually be good at.