Over the past five years, we had built up our family programs and were having great success in engaging new alumni of all ages. Our alumni were thrilled to have opportunities to bring their children along to family-friendly events and it helped us connect with those who were in the 30-50 age range. However, these opportunities were limited to alumni who lived close to campus, excluding nearly two-thirds of our alumni.
Brutus’ Summer Reading Challenge was born out of this desire to engage other alumni families across the country, spread the buckeye spirit to many children of Buckeye parents and grandparents and instill a love learning in our young buckeyes as part of Ohio State’s educational mission.
The idea was that our alumni would register their children for the free program and then as the children read (or were read to), they could track their reading time on an Ohio State themed map that we provided. Once they hit certain hourly milestones along the way, they would let us know via an electronic survey, and we would send them a small prize. We created different maps correlating to varying reading levels, and each had six prizes to incentivize their reading along the way.
We had 993 readers participate in the program and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with many alumni parents requesting us to do it again next year. Some alumni requested an adult reading challenge accompany it so that they can participate in the reading challenge as well!
From the Judges
We thought this was a cleaver way to engage alumni and families, and could be expanded in the future.
