As Florida Gulf Coast University prepares to celebrate its 20th anniversary beginning in August, the committee planning the extended party needs your help in a big way.
Dust off your most cherished FGCU memories along with those keepsakes you have stashed away and share them at the 20th Anniversary Open House from 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, April 7 in the WGCU TV Studio in the Broadcast Building.
“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.”
Alumni, donors, community leaders, local history buffs and current, retired or former employees are welcome to participate in the open house. 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 & 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 new marketing campaign — The FGCU Effect — which in recent months has been introduced throughout Southwest Florida in television spots, billboards and other 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?
So what’s your story?
YOU’RE INVITED
- What: FGCU 20th Anniversary Open House
- When: 4 to 6 p.m. April 7 in the WGCU TV studio in the Broadcast Building.
- More info: Kim Wallace at [email protected] or Deborah Wiltrout at [email protected].