"It was a simple but effective idea, born from COVID challenges, that put a real face to our 100,000 alumni milestone. Crossing the threshold of 100,000 grads happened in the crux of the pandemic and limited our resources and options to celebrate this incredible milestone. So, we decided to step away from the faceless magazine covers of recent years and instead fill it with faces that showed our graduates' diversity and joy for our 100,000 Grads issue. Even our President joined in on the fun and submitted a selfie sporting a Canadian tuxedo for his President’s column. Grads were invited to submit selfies for the magazine along with fun facts about themselves (from which we discovered some outstanding achievements and fun memories).
It was a fairly late-in-the-game decision with only two weeks to market and collect photos, so we set a modest goal of receiving 50 selfies to populate our magazine cover, but were delighted to receive almost five times as many and ended up adding a two-page spread in the magazine to include entries from as many of the 242 participating alumni as possible. With the flood of selfie submissions and positive feedback--both internal and external--once the magazine was released, we asked participating grads’ permission to include their photos in other materials. These photos ended up being used in an alumni video for six virtual Convocation ceremonies, a “Welcome to Alumni” brochure sent to grads, and in the College’s Annual Report."
From the Judges
We really liked the creativity and innovativeness of this project. It is easily replicable by other institutions, even digitally. It demonstrated a very efficient use of staff time and the impact a small team could have for the institution.
