Symposium on Education in Entertainment and Engineering

SESSION PAIR 1: TOURING VENUES & ENGINEERING (Friday Afternoon, 7/24/2026)

• Panel Discussion – The Load In / Load Out: How Touring and Touring Venues Shape Entertainment and Engineering Education –  How touring realities—logistics, venue variability, safety, codes, and failure—should change what and how we teach
• Working Session – Teaching Touring Logistics, Standards, and Systems Thinking – A collaborative working session focused on translating touring realities—scheduling, flexibility, safety, and failure—into effective educational experiences and learning outcomes.

SESSION PAIR 2: FACILITY ENGINEERING & VENUE DESIGN (Saturday Morning, 7/25/2026)

• Panel Discussion – Designing the Permanent for the Temporary: How Venue Engineering Informs Scenic and Systems Education – The focus of this discussion will be on how the relationship between architecture, engineering, and scenery should influence curricular structure, collaboration models, and student preparation.
• Working Session – Designing the Designed Space: Teaching Venue and Scenic Engineering Through Case Studies – Participants develop curricular strategies and case-study frameworks for teaching venue design, scenic systems, and interdisciplinary collaboration within academic programs.

SESSION PAIR 3: LEARNING THROUGH FAILURE (Saturday Afternoon, 7/25/2026)

• Panel Discussion – When It Breaks: How Failure, Recovery, and Troubleshooting Should Shape Theatre Engineering Education – Industry and academic voices share stories of breakdowns, troubleshooting, and recovery—revealing how failure drives better engineering, teamwork, and decision-making. This discussion will lead us to rethink how we teach problem solving, decision-making, and resilience.
• Working Session – Failing Forward: Embedding Troubleshooting, Iteration, and Resilience into Engineering Education – A hands-on working session focused on designing failure-based learning experiences that build technical judgment, collaboration, and confidence in students.

The live entertainment industry presents increasingly complex challenges for technicians—whether in small community theatres or in large theme parks. At the same time, the shape of post-secondary education is changing—with an increasing emphasis on hands-on learning and outcome-based instructional design becoming the norm. At the convergence of these threads is the need to effectively prepare and educate students to enter the rapidly changing world of live entertainment technology.

Typically held in late July, the Symposium on Education in Entertainment and Engineering highlights advances, challenges, and trends in curricular design, instructional design, academic research, and cross-disciplinary work related to the intersection of engineering and live entertainment. This symposium is specifically aimed at building bridges between two exceptionally different academic and professional cultures and practices; presentations come from many different backgrounds and academic experiences. Symposium topics explore the interstitial spaces amongst the disciplines of engineering, theatre technology, and education.