As the lights of Kresge Auditorium fade to black, a glowing monitor shines onto Isaiah White’s face. The Nova Tour is about to begin. For White, however, this isn’t just any show. It’s also the beginning of the final exam for his internship.
What is CMC?
Live Event Media Management students must choose between two tracks: on-campus or off-campus. The former requires students to complete a practicum, an internship, and 9 credit hours from a list of courses.
The off-campus track sends students to the Contemporary Music Center (CMC) in Nashville for a 12-week, 16-credit-hour program that fulfills their internship requirement.
CMC has four tracks: artist, business, worship, and technical (which is the one completed by Live Event students). But no matter their track, students use their unique abilities to put on a tour, which serves as their final exam.
Preparing for CMC
Like the experience with Los Angeles Film Studies Center, CMC is an Olivet-sponsored off-campus study program, meaning students must complete the Off-Campus Clearance Form. This form requires the student to meet with the registrar, their academic advisor, the Office of Student Development, and Student Financial Aid.
IMPORTANT NOTE from the Off-Campus Study webpage: “[Olivet] will charge the student a $250 ‘Undergraduate Off-Campus Study Fee.’ For Sponsored programs a student may use up to $2,500 of ONU institutional aid toward the tuition.”
“There’s so many people that I had to get signatures from and talk to and stuff like that,” said Isaiah White on the topic of the Off-Campus Clearance Form. “It’s lot . . . I think I made the analogy of running around like a chicken with your head cut off . . .”
Students also have to apply for CMC. The application can be found on its website.
“It was an online form that really asked you anything and everything about you,” said Morgan Manahan, an Olivet alum who completed the Business Track at CMC in 2022 as a public relations major. “What year you were in school, why you were doing it, what you wanted to get out of it, and what your experience was.”
What Happens at CMC?
Once the student completes all the necessary steps and is accepted into CMC, they can pack their things and move to Nashville at the beginning of the semester.
According to Program Director Warren Petit, the semester is divided into three parts. During the first week, students are taken around Nashville to visit various locations, including a publishing house and a recording studio.
“We’ll just go everywhere,” said Petit. “You kind of get that bug out of your system—like, ‘I saw Nashville.’ Then we will go into the middle portion of the semester, which I call rinse, wash, repeat. And it’s all about putting on a show.”
During the second part of the semester, students get to work preparing for the tour. While the artists write songs and the business students create a marketing plan, students in the Technical Track focus on the sound, lights, and cameras.
Once everything is planned out, students run the show on Thursdays and watch a recording of it on Fridays to see what can be improved.
“You’re allowed to fail here and you will fail often,” said White after describing a technical issue that occurred during one practice. “[But there’s] a lot of learning from it. I know exactly what not to do next time.”
The Tour
The third part of the semester is the tour itself. This year’s Nova Tour consisted of three shows across the Midwest and two shows at CMC.
All the students and faculty pack onto a charter bus that transports them to each show location. Once they arrive, they spend the day setting up and rehearsing.
“The most stressful part was that 15 minutes right before you got to campus. [I would think], ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s going to be great, and I hope it all goes well.'”
Morgan Manahan
White served as the lighting director for this year’s tour. He was responsible for setting up and managing the lights used for each show.
“I felt rewarded by how it all came together and my freedom to do what I wanted with our lights for the show,” said White. “This let me feel like I did a lot of it on my own, and when [the] tour happened, that part of it was boosted by my success.”
