By Megan Lambert (The Cascade) – Email
Print Edition: January 7, 2015
If you remember hearing sound checks during afternoon classes and walking across the Green only to find booths and food vendors scattered along the path last semester, you were walking through one of our university’s 40th anniversary parties.
Between the new graphics on UFV’s website, posters in the hallway depicting a timeline of UFV’s history, campus events, and the 40th anniversary logo etched into a Chilliwack corn maze this fall, it was hard to miss that UFV has been celebrating its anniversary since April 2014.
The celebration costs have taken $191,000 for marketing consultation, promotional materials, extra employees, entertainers, and supplies. Executive director of university relations Leslie Courchesne says surplus money from the last two years and donations have kept the events from dipping into the UFV’s current operating budget.
However, attendance for on-campus events was low — Courchesne gave a loose estimate of 500 to 1,000 people attending the Abbotsford and Canada Education Park (CEP) event over the course of the day. In Abbotsford, much of that was foot traffic across the Green. The 40th celebrations in Mission peaked at about 500 people, and the Hope campus hosted roughly 50 to 75.
“The on-campus events were an opportunity to not only have students, staff, and faculty celebrate the university, but to invite the wider community to come onto campus and get to know us a little better,” she says. “It [was] a one-time opportunity to draw attention to ourselves,” she says.
While students may have noticed events happening on-campus, UFV’s aims with the 40th anniversary series of promotions and events were designed to reach outside, into the community and local businesses.
UFV — previously UCFV, and before that, Fraser Valley College — is still seen as less respected than older and more established universities like SFU, UBC, or UVic. Having received university status in 2008, UFV is still seen by many as merely a place where students can start their degree. The hope, Courchesne explains, is that an increased focus on outreach will change the university’s reputation in the community.
“Just because we don’t have a super high GPA to get in here, doesn’t mean that this isn’t a high quality institution,” she says. “What we’re trying to do is move that needle on the reputation and awareness to the front — to have the university viewed positively and people to have a strong fit with UFV.”
Alumni were invited to celebrate, too — UFV held a top 40 alumni campaign where graduates were nominated for the work they have done after their time at UFV. There was an evening reception at a winery as a capstone for the campaign where the “Top 40” were named, and Alumni Hall was revamped with televisions displaying info on the Top 40, a new banner, and fresh paint.
Comparing UFV to older universities, which have a larger pool of alumni to engage with, manager of alumni engagement Nancy Armitage says efforts like these are steps toward fostering a connection with the institution’s history. “Being such a young institution, we’ve only just started building a culture of giving with alumni,” she says.
“[And] certainly the university wants to provide an opportunity for alumni to give back, should they wish,” she adds, using the Changing Lives Bursary Endowment as an example.
For the designs that would brand the 40th anniversary and UFV’s new identity, the university hired a marketing agency to work with its own graphic designers on staff to create the new logos and posters.
However, current students were not involved in the process, and for the most part did not have input in the future of the university’s image. The university did not consult current graphic design students or business and marketing students for input in branding, design, or event planning.
“We do involve students very much,” Courchesne says. She says student opinion was consulted through an online survey and a focus group on which four students sat with alumni, faculty and staff, and donors. UFV also hired a tourism and hospitality graduate to help co-ordinate events, and one current student, Jarrett Bainbridge, sat on the 40th anniversary steering committee.
The committee didn’t expect any immediate revenue from the campaigning, but Courschesne notes that the events all work into a bigger picture.
“The goals of this were external as well as on-campus” she explains. “We needed to make sure the wider community, potential donors, [and] government all understood the great story that UFV had to tell.”
Because funding for post-secondary institutions has been decreasing each year, there is a growing dependence on alternate sources of revenue which could include donors or sponsorships from the community. However, Courchesne says the celebrations and new marketing are not necessarily a response to the lack of government support.
“I wouldn’t say it was a direct relationship there,” she says. “But as a publicly assisted, publicly funded university, we have a responsibility to the wider community and to taxpayers to report out on what we do and the positive things that go on here.”
With files from Katie Stobbart and Michael Scoular.
