Etiquette Dinner April 18, 2022

Etiquette Dinner at the Hilton Garden Inn

The Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science hosted a cocktail party & etiquette dinner at the Hilton Garden Inn on Monday, April 18th from 4:30 - 7:00 PM.  It was sponsored by Principal Financial. Our etiquette speaker was finance professor at UIowa, Cathy Zaharis. Joing us was visiting UEC committee member from the SOA, Mr. Scott Lennox, FSA, FCIA, FCAS.

This was a great opportunity to sharpen our soft skills and learn about the nuances of fancy corporate dining. As actuaries, odds are that we will participate in these events during our career so this is a great skill to have in the toolkit! It was a lovely meal and great to visit with our fellow students.

After the event these were some of the comments:

This is the first time for me to have a chance to be in etiquette dinner. I learnt a lot of manners while having meals for formal business dinner. Everything was great, the guest speaker was so fun and friendly. Overall, everything is perfect, and I met many new people. Thank you for hosting this great event!"

"I enjoyed the etiquette dinner and would recommend doing it again, as I feel like it would be good for the underclassmen to get to socialize with the upperclassmen. I will definitely take away some of the table manners I learned, like where to place silverware on your plate to signalize that I am done eating."

"I definitely learned a lot last night, so thank you for helping organize the event. One thing in particular was that once a utensil leaves the table it should not return. It was a very fun event, and I learned a lot."

"Thanks for organizing the event. It was the first time I learned U.S. table manners concretely. The way to eat soup that Dr. Cathy Zaharis taught us was helpful. I didn’t get soup on my shirt. It was nice that I got to know other actuarial science students. Some of us will be taking multiple same courses next semester."

"I thought the etiquette dinner was a great event! It was good to see a big turnout too. I learned that the bread plate goes on the left and the drink goes on the right. You can make the “b” for bread and “d” for drink with your fingers. Thanks again for making this event possible!"

"Thanks for arranging the etiquette dinner.  I really enjoyed it.  Cathy spoke well."

"The etiquette dinner was lovely. Cathy did a great job. Thank you for arranging it!"