For Astrid Schrier, planning events is more than just a passion; it is her dream, and now, even before graduation, she is well on her way to success. This year, Schrier, a Temple University tourism and hospitality management junior, won the Professional Convention Management Association (PCMA) Student Planner of the Year award. She won the award for a session she submitted for presentation at the PCMA annual conference held Jan. 13-16 in Seattle.

“This is a huge accomplishment,” said Joe Goldblatt, a former Temple senior lecturer who taught Astrid about event planning. “Out of thousands of students, Astrid was named the best student event planner in the world.”

Schrier’s winning presentation, titled “Student Leadership: From University Leadership to Servant Leadership,” included learning objectives and goals, timeline, room set, budget and suggested speakers. For the featured speakers, Schrier chose members of the speakers bureau at the Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership.

“I ultimately picked servant leadership as my topic because it is an important value for students to be exposed to,” Schrier said. “Servant-leadership emphasizes the leader’s role as steward of the resources provided by the organization, and it encourages leaders to serve others while staying focused on achieving results in line with the organization’s values and integrity.”

For Schrier, winning this award was more than just an honor; it was an invaluable learning experience. “A particular challenge that I faced was actually being able to put together a session proposal because I had never done this before,” Schrier said. “I received a lot of help from Dr. Goldblatt in helping to get the ideas flowing and then piecing it all together.”

The award included hotel, airfare and registration for the 2008 annual meeting, and a $1,000 scholarship for the school year. As co-president of Temple University’s student chapter of PCMA, Schrier remains active in the organization.

“This major and industry have a lot to offer in terms of different directions to take a career,” Schrier said. “My involvement with PCMA has helped me to shape my career goals and has introduced me to important people within the industry. I encourage all students to get involved with professional associations within their major, so they may be enriched by similar opportunities.”



—Written by Margaret Mastrogiacomo

For the School of Tourism and Hospitality Management