"Seventeen years ago, UVA designed the More Than the Score Pre-Football Lecture Series—an in-person lecture series to host stellar UVA faculty to share their research, new books, and topics they teach in the classroom before each football home game. On Saturday mornings before each home football game, the Lifetime Learning team in the Office of Engagement would welcome up to 500 old friends and new acquaintances—alumni, families, friends, and fans eager to learn.
During the pandemic, we pivoted to a virtual lecture series on Friday mornings to fill the void that many of our constituents experienced. The fall 2020 virtual program realized an expansive audience never considered, with 5,485 registered from 48 states and 18 countries. Previously in 2019, only 2,000 registrations were received for the in-person program.
In 2021, we returned More Than the Score to an in-person audience with the desire to continue taking advantage of this program's online interest. We tested it as a hybrid program, offering an in-person speaker and sharing it as a virtual live stream worldwide to UVA's alumni and parent community. It was well-received. Therefore, we launched the fall 2022 program as a hybrid and welcomed 6,700 registered guests from all 50 states and 33 countries around the globe for these educational lectures."
From the Judges
We really appreciated how UVA employed lifelong learning to engage their sports and non-sports fans in this creative initiative. While many institutions have been successful with lectures, this program demonstrated engaging a specific constituency at a high level and provided the data and high-impact packaging to do it very successfully. We also liked how this initiative could easily be replicated at a variety of institutions.
