In 2023, 521 institutions received Circle of Excellence Awards, CASE’s annual awards that showcase outstanding work in advancement. Of these, 23 institutions were first-time winners. Read more about three of these first-time winners here and how they are including students in their work to connect their communities and advance their institutions.
Student Intern-Led Brand Campaign
Reaching potential students through current students
Amid the pandemic, Vionna Fiducia—an international student at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University in China—found herself stuck off-campus in her home of Indonesia. After the 2020 holiday break, she reached out to the university’s communications office about a possible internship.
International Communications Manager Tammy Kaup agreed. In spring 2021, when Kaup’s team wanted to work with an Indonesian vendor, Kaup had Fiducia become an intermediary when a language barrier emerged.
This experience got Fiducia excited about the potential of a broader communications project with Indonesian vendors—and Fiducia and Kaup went on to launch a student-led brand campaign project.
With Kaup’s approval, Fiducia reached out to two other Indonesian international students, and over the next year, they formed a team of three students who researched the Indonesian market, negotiated with vendors, and wrote content to achieve a successful brand campaign.
“When the team first formed, we had enough initial experience and the drive and curiosity to learn more about the marketing environment. … These similarities brought us together and we were able to put forward our best for the campaign,” says Fiducia.
The student team focused their efforts in two areas: radio campaigns to reach potential students and online newspaper campaigns to reach their parents. The radio advertisements shared the selling points of XJTLU through a scripted conversation between two students. The newspaper advertorials spoke to the strength of XJTLU’s East/West blend of education.
“It seemed like a cool idea to let [the student interns] figure out what made sense in their own market because they're just a little bit older than the students that we're recruiting. They knew how to reach those students and their parents,” says Kaup.
Her team reviewed all materials and gave feedback before anything was published, to make sure the campaign maintained the university’s brand standards. This allowed the interns free reign to be self-driven and play to their strengths, says Kaup.
The program has since won a 2023 bronze Circle of Excellence Award for marketing initiatives and is currently in its fourth year with another team of students.
“The world is every day a more global place,” says Kaup. “And the more we as universities can reach out to people in the way that they want to be reached, in their own languages and through the communication tools that they prefer, the better for everyone.”
Sharing school traditions through a student-created film
In 2022, the Dragon School took on a new challenge with its annual holiday communications: a film. The resulting two-minute-long A Dragon Tale tells the story of shared tradition between a grandpa (played by alumnus Peter Bowles) and his granddaughter (Sofia, who currently attends the Oxford, England school).
In the film, Bowles climbs a ladder to an attic where he finds a bag of marbles and other memorabilia from his school days at Dragon, which he then shares with Sofia.
“It was about connection, communication, and family traditions, and how they’ve been and continue to be built through stories told,” says Sheena Lawrence, Head of Community Communications.
Marbles hold a special place in the heart of Dragon alumni, explains Lawrence.
“A certain cohort really relates to playing marbles on the playground. So many of our Dragons go on to be entrepreneurs and say they learned how to do business playing marbles in the sandpit, because it's all about the exchange,” she says.
The film was created during the school’s Saturday extracurricular program, QUEST. Students brainstormed concepts, tested camera angles, sketched costumes, and learned from filmmaker Tom Lucas (Burst Design) about the basic concepts of filmmaking, from lighting to locations.
“We tried to put [the children] as much at the heart of the production as possible. … We wanted them to really feel ownership of it and feel proud of what was achieved by it,” says Lawrence.
The film also invited viewers to purchase a bag of Dragon Marbles to support the school’s bursary program, which brought in lots of new donors, says Lawrence.
“It felt like such a huge achievement to have had so many different people involved, especially the children. We proved that they absolutely can [make a film]. They just need a bit of guidance. I enjoyed … seeing the generations together on the playground [during filming]. Our alumni have an incredible connection with our school—it’s quite unbelievable,” says Lawrence.
Dragon won a 2023 Grand Gold Circle of Excellence Award for the film’s achievement. Its community is looking forward to the 2023 holiday film, which will feature shadow puppetry.
Pioneering student emotional education in Latin America
When the Universidad del Rosario created the UR Emotion education center in 2019, it was one of the first institutions in Colombia to focus on emotional education programming. This year the center won a bronze Circle of Excellence Award for student engagement.
Its creation was inspired by data that showed its students were having difficulty facing and managing emotional changes. Universidad del Rosario wanted to respond to this issue not only from a clinical standpoint, but also on a pedagogical, university-wide level.
The center’s teachings are based on emotional intelligence and education theories, pioneering a model of learning for both Colombia and Latin America.
“[The skills the center teaches] are necessary for young people to be able to confront the changes that they will face in life,” says Ana María Restrepo Fallon, Dean of the Student Wellbeing School.
The center incorporates arts, sports, and games into its psychological counseling, group work, and preventive programs. Staff developed an intervention model with five healing environments:
- conocerte (self-knowledge),
- emocionarte (animate yourself),
- create (creative therapies),
- recrearte (emotional training through games), and
- punto de silencio (quiet place).
The team measures student success through questionnaires that are administered at the beginning and end of a semester to evaluate life skills.
“The center has transformed the way that we deliver comprehensive training to our students, creating a culture that is changing lives every day and giving students the ability to be better people for society,” says Restrepo Fallon.
The center also serves the university’s professors and staff, further fostering a culture of emotional well-being on campus.
“We are going to continue to grow,” says Restrepo Fallon. “We’re working for a policy in Colombia that makes it obligatory to have emotional education in the curriculum. That is a very big dream for our country.”