As Florida Gulf Coast University prepares to celebrate its 20th anniversary beginning in August 2016, the committee planning the extended party needs your help in a big way.
All you have to do is dust off your most cherished FGCU memories along with those keepsakes you have stashed away and share them at one of two 20th Anniversary Open Houses: 10 a.m. to noon Feb. 24 in room 214 at the Cohen Center, and 4 to 6 p.m. April 7 in the WGCU TV Studio.
“We think it will be a great way to obtain memories, artifacts, photos … things we can use for marketing the anniversary on social media and the (20th anniversary) micro site,” said Kim Wallace, director of alumni relations and co-chair of the 20th Anniversary Planning Committee with Deborah Wiltrout, associate vice president for marketing and communications.
“As a committee, we strongly believe that this is a university-wide celebration,” Wiltrout said. “So we’ve created an opportunity to gather input from our community — and hopefully start to build excitement for our 20th.”
The first open house at the Cohen Center during typical campus hours is expected to attract mostly current faculty and staff. The evening gathering at WGCU affords more convenient hours for alumni, retired or former employees, donors and other community leaders.
The goal is to collect and record lots of cool stuff — personal stories and oral histories, photos, documents and any and all memorabilia that’s FGCU-related — using a variety of media formats. Various stations will include a video booth and a writing station to record your memories, a place to scan images of photos and documents, a collection box for tagged keepsakes and recorded items that can’t be copied onsite at the open house, and a station where photos now in the FGCU Library Archives and Special Collections might be identified by those who’ve been around the block at FGCU.
Besides members of the planning committee, university marketing and communications and WGCU staffers will be on hand to assist, along with FGCU history students recruited by professors Dr. Nicola Foote and Dr. Erik Carlson.
Best of all, the 20th anniversary initiative ties in with the university’s spanking-new marketing campaign — The FGCU Effect — which in recent weeks has been introduced throughout Southwest Florida in television spots, billboards and promotional materials. What better way to gauge the far-reaching effect two decades of educational and institutional growth have had than to reflect upon what got us here? As noted philosopher, poet and writer George Santayana put it, “To know your future, you must know your past.”
So what’s your story?
YOU’RE INVITED
- What: FGCU 20th Anniversary Open Houses
- When: 10 a.m. to noon Feb. 24 in Cohen Center 213; 4 to 6 p.m. April 7 in the WGCU TV studio.
- More info: Kim Wallace at [email protected] or Deborah Wiltrout at [email protected].