The Williams School works with faculty in its departments and programs to host a series of special events throughout the year. These events are intended to supplement classroom learning and are open to all students, regardless of whether they major in a Williams School discipline.
The liberal arts environment allows students from many different backgrounds and majors to learn and consider principles of marketing and advertising. Points of on-campus engagement with marketing and advertising are hardly limited to students studying business or communications; the different academic disciplines offered at W&L allow students to approach these opportunities with a variety of perspectives.
Each term, the Williams School participates in the Council on Foreign Relations' Academic Conference Call series. The series provides students the opportunity to interact with a CFR fellow, Foreign Affairs author, or another expert in an hour-long teleconferenced discussion. Calls take place every other week during the term and are dedicated to different topics related to international affairs and U.S. foreign policy. Background readings are distributed prior to each call, and the audio recording is posted afterward.
DataCon is an event highlighting the impacts of data analytics, big data and statistical computing across a variety of industries. The inaugural event was held in the fall of 2017 and featured keynote speaker Rich Cober '96, Executive Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer for MicroStrategy.
The Entrepreneurship Summit is a two-day conference sponsored by the J. Lawrence Connolly Center for Entrepreneurship. The event takes place each fall and provides an opportunity for students, faculty and alumni to come together, exchange ideas and develop valuable connections for current and future entrepreneurial endeavors. Each year, about 100 alumni come back to campus to participate in the program.
The H. Parker Willis Lecture Series was founded by Emeritus Professor of Economics John M. Gunn '45 to honor the first dean of the School of Commerce, H. Parker Willis. Willis served as an economics advisor to Congressman Carter Glass of Virginia's Sixth District. He was also a consultant to the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1912 and 1913, during which time the creation of the Federal Reserve System was being considered.
The Real Estate Forum is an annual event at which alumni in the real estate world can develop professional relationships with each other and with students who are interested in working in real estate.