Illinois Wesleyan Students Learn Business Decorum

Liza Zolot (left) and Jennifer Elliott (right), both members of the class of 2003, learn etiquette from Maria Everding (center).

Dec. 4, 2002

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – College students may be well acquainted with dining en masse in the cafeteria, conversing in dormitory halls, and making connections at Friday night parties, but these “skills,” however well they suit campus life, may be inadequate for the professional arena.

On Monday, December 2, Illinois Wesleyan students participated in a business-like “etiquette dinner” held in the Main Lounge of the Memorial Center. Nationally renowned etiquette consultant Maria Everding presented an interactive lecture during the dining experience. She addressed basic dinner manners like how to appropriately cut one’s food as well as more obscure aspects of etiquette, such as how to introduce a spouse who has a Ph.D.

Everding stressed the importance of sophistication and graciousness in business settings and how young people entering the professional world can use good manners to “outclass” their competition.

The students received dinner, a copy of Maria Everding’s Panache that Pays, an etiquette guide for young professionals, and also a lecture entitled “Mixin’ and Minglin’: Making Professional Conversation,” presented by O. Ray Angle, director of Career Services at Webster University, St. Louis.

At the end of the program, Everding quoted George Bernard Shaw when she told the students, “There is no accomplishment so easy toacquire as politeness, and none more profitable.” Hopefully this will ring true for Illinois Wesleyan students as they embark on their careers with a savvy, competitive edge.