I had the idea to spotlight notable black alumni during Black History Month and beyond. My goal was to improve black alumni buy-in to the College, eventually ending in more engagement and potential volunteers and donors.
We started with some of the earliest graduates from the College and work my way forward. I was tasked with reaching out to the potential features, explaining the project, sending them the questionnaire, and when I received the responses, I wrote them out into an article form. From there, I was responsible for finding pictures of them, coding the pages, and writing social media promotion.
Despite the slow start, the project has been resoundingly successful. We have alumni nominating themselves, their friends, and their relatives. The posts are also very successful on social media as well.
I was responsible for the College’s Ring Tradition. We sold the official College of Charleston Ring with a portion of each purchase benefitting the Alumni Association. I was able to utilize many tactics to promote and expand the program, including organizing Ring Days, regular email promotions, events, and coordinating with student promoters.
Ring Days are where our partners would be on campus to sell the rings, sending supporting invitations to eligible students, sending parents information about the rings, social media, and creating yard signs to be placed for ring days. Pictured is my design for the ring day sign
I helped organize the first Ring Tradition Night, where students came to place their rings to stay overnight in the College’s first classroom.
To promote the event, we created social media, sent a drip email campaign to students and parents, and collaborated with other departments to capture the event. I created certificates to certify that each ring had spent the night in the College’s first classroom. The pictures below were posted to the College’s official instagram and snapchat account to promote awareness for next year’s event.
In 2015, the College of Charleston’s Student Alumni Associates launched a program called the “Traditions Keepers”, in which students would receive a book and complete common College traditions to receive a medal to wear at graduation.
In 2017, I lobbied for the book to be turned into an interactive app that could be used by alumni as well. I managed and executed each stage of the process, including the design, created image assets, and updated copy. The CofC Traditions app launched on April 8, 2018.
College of Charleston Alumni Association, 2017-2018
Profiles aimed to engage black alumni who felt out of touch with the College, this campaign was incredibly successful in improving buy-in and engagement. I recommend reading the profiles on Otto German, Linda Dingle Gadson, and Deborah Deas.
President’s Day weekend is usually one of the coldest weekends of the year in our hometown, Charleston, South Carolina. Although it’s still cold, Phil predicted an early spring. For February’s The Twelve, we’re loving bright colors, natural and unnatural scenes.
Tthe entire article is interesting, and brings up great points about getting into creative flow. A certain phrase struck me as particularly poignant: “experiencing a mindlessness born from mindfulness on a task.” It’s something I miss about writing and hope to get back to it – the inner mind connecting directly with my keyboard, untangling knots I didn’t know were there.
We’re all taking Knozen‘s minute personality test – it’s pretty accurate, fun, and nice to look at.
The trait I had the highest score for was patience, with a 10/10. Then caring and brainy, tied at 8. Shy and confident, both 7s. Serious I scored poorly, 3, with a score of 0 for being aggressive. Be, aggressive, be be, aggressive.
S. Parcy Bowman the second (SPARK-eee) has been living in our pond for a couple of weeks now. It isn’t very big– two feet at the time of writing, or about the length of my arm. After hearing “well, I’m not worried about him, just his mom,” I decided to call a local gator getter, Ron. From my description, Ron said that Sparcy is probably from last year’s hatching, and that Momma Parcy is long gone. Sparcy is probably eating invertebrate larvae in the pond, so we should thank it for the decrease in bugs. (I’ll cancel my order of alligator chow.)
I told Ron that the pond is pretty gross, but he told me that alligators have “real strong” immune systems, and that the pond, no matter how gross it looks to me, is a great nursery for Sparcy. Sparcy is here temporarily- in Ron’s words, “If that little guy can get in there, he can get himself out. He’ll outgrow his food supply and leave in the middle of the night and head towards a bigger pond. He’s alright.” I described SPARC’s location on Clements Ferry, and Ron said that the chances of Sparcy getting hit by a car are small: Ron could only remember one instance where an alligator was hit on Clements Ferry. Alligators are nocturnal for the most part, and when Sparcy would be moving the chances are that there wouldn’t be much traffic. There are also a lot of ponds that I didn’t know about on this side of the road, and that Sparcy would be more likely to pick a pond on this same side than cross the road.
Interestingly, once Sparcy hits the three foot mark, it’ll have a bite similar to a german shepherd. It only made me want to bring Sparcy to Dog Friday even more! I told Ron my dream of having Sparcy curl up underneath my sparceting desk, and he gently reminded me that catching an alligator is against the law, but still could do some damage to a finger if provoked. I will put my alligator dreams on hold… for now.
Need to know:
– Alligators are nocturnal. So be careful coming in early or staying past dusk on Dog Fridays with Fido.
– Sparcy got into our pond, it can get itself out. It’s here in a safe, secure, otherwise alligator-less environment to establish himself in a gator-eat-gator world.
– Don’t feed the gator! It’s eating invertebrae and bugs.
– It’s just a baby! It’s about one year old, so be gentle. It’s just a lil guy!
– Don’t worry about lil ol Sparcy. Just don’t go splashing around in the pond… although I don’t know why you would.
