In 2016, the Duke Graduate School marked the 90th anniversary of its founding. Starting in late 2015, I oversaw the planning and implementation of the anniversary celebration, which involved both content strategy and event planning. I developed a series of digital content and in-person touchpoints that strategically leveraged the occasion to strengthen the school’s connection with its students and alumni, raise its profile on campus, and support its fundraising efforts.
Content Strategy + Event Planning
I decided to develop a suite of content that highlighted the history of The Graduate School. Collaborating with a senior colleague who possessed significant institutional knowledge, I planned out multiple deliverables:
- A digital timeline of the school’s history
- A series of spotlights on notable or interesting aspects of the school’s history
- A series of profiles of one notable school alum from each decade of the school’s existence
I also worked with colleagues to plan several in-person/physical touchpoints:
- Expanding the school’s annual homecoming reception into a 90th anniversary celebration
- Creating a large, printed version of the timeline of school history for public display
- Creating a set of portable exhibit displays based on content from the history and alumni spotlights, to be used at various school events throughout the year
- Holding a photo contest, soliciting submissions from current graduate students, which will then be developed into digital content and a physical exhibit
- Developing a new alumni honor as a vehicle for engaging graduates and potential supporters
There were significant intersections among many of the deliverables and touchpoints. This was by design, creating efficiencies that allowed us to generate do more with limited staff resources.
I developed all of the deliverables in a span of about six months, rolling out various pieces throughout early and mid-2016, with the celebration culminating around the homecoming celebration that fall.
History Timeline
Digging through historical archives, my senior colleague and I compiled extensive information about the history of The Graduate School. I then curated a selection of that information and designed a digital timeline, built using Timeline JS. The timeline was displayed on the school website and on screens in the main Duke library.
I also designed a 15-foot-long printed version of the timeline. This was put on display in a high-traffic area in the main Duke library, where many of our graduate students spent a lot of their time. It remained on display for several months during 2016. (PDF of the printed timeline)
Spotlights and Alumni Profiles
I wrote a series of six spotlights on various aspects of the school’s history:
- The early years
- The first two PhD graduates
- The first two Black PhDs
- Teaching graduate students how to teach
- The growth of the international student population
- The James B. Duke Fellowship
The topics were selected to provide a glimpse of the school’s history, its diversity, some of the ways in which it supports students, and the importance of the funding it provides.
I also wrote nine alumni profiles, one from each decade of the school’s history.
The spotlights and profiles were published on the Graduate School website and promoted on social media throughout 2016. They remain a part of the school’s website, now as a component in an evergreen section on the school’s history.
Portable Exhibit
I also used elements from the timeline, history spotlights, and alumni profiles to create four 7-foot-tall printed exhibit panels that could be transported relatively easily to various locations and mounted on metal bases. The portability was important because the school does not have a permanent large events venue and has to reserve event spaces all across campus. Having a portable exhibit allowed us to have a prominent physical presence for the anniversary celebration at various school events throughout the year, including homecoming and commencement.
Photo Contest
I knew from my day-to-day work that many of our students do field research in very interesting settings and are bound to have great images. To take advantage of that, I organized a photo contest, asking current graduate students to send in photos that illustrated their research. This served as a way to incorporate user-generated content into our celebration, engage our current students, and support the school’s ongoing work to highlight the research that our students conduct.
We received a few dozen entries, which we housed on a Tumblr blog. We formed an in-house award committee to pick a winner and several runners-up. We also held a social media contest to allow people to vote by liking the images on Facebook, with the picture receiving the most likes being selected as the People’s Choice.
After announcing the winners, we ordered 17×11 prints of all the entries and turned them into an exhibit at the main Duke library, which remained on display for a couple months. This provided another venue in which to highlight the work of graduate students. After the exhibit came down, we gave the prints to the students who submitted the photos, giving them a nice little memento of the occasion.
New Alumni Award
To further use the anniversary as an opportunity to engage our alumni, I worked with school leaders and our development team to create a new alumni honor — the Few-Glasson Alumni Society, named for the first president of Duke and the first dean of The Graduate School. The school already had one annual alumni honor, which was an award for significant career accomplishments and typically went to older alumni late in their careers. The new honor we created was designed to be more broadly targeted, allowing us to use it as a way to strategically engage alumni at earlier stages of their careers and start grooming them as potential future supporters of The Graduate School, whether that be through financial gifts, service on university boards, or engagement with current students. It also gave us another tool to highlight the contributions that the school’s graduates have made to society.
For our first cohort of honorees, we recognized three outstanding alumni, including a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Homecoming Celebration
Our anniversary celebration culminated in fall 2016 with a big party at the school’s annual homecoming reception. The event drew noticeably more attendees than in prior years. We handed out commemorative anniversary coins, which I designed. All three Few-Glasson inductees attended, and the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff delivered a terrific address. Hundreds of students and alumni then danced the night away, providing a fitting climax to the celebration.
Outcomes and Aftermath
We planned the 90th anniversary celebration to create opportunities to strengthen the school’s connection with its students and alumni, elevate the school’s profile on campus, and support the school’s fundraising efforts. It succeeded on all those fronts.
The continuous stream of anniversary-related content over the entire year helped the school’s visibility on various university channels. The in-person engagement opportunities, such as the photo contest and homecoming, saw strong participation and were well-received. The entire anniversary celebration effort was integrated into the school’s ongoing fundraising efforts, providing a vehicle to help the school conclude a very successful five-year campaign on a high note.
Many elements from the celebration also continued to provide returns well after the anniversary year. For instance:
- Much of the content we generated now lives in an evergreen section on the Graduate School website.
- The printed timeline now hangs in the Graduate School building, while the printed traveling displays have served as useful props and backdrops for video and photo shoots.
- The research into the school’s history sparked additional internal interest in that topic, which in later years helped spur the creation of a mini-site on the history of the school’s Black graduates and a greater commitment to document the full history of The Graduate School.
- The photo contest provided some nice images for us to use in our promotion of graduate student research. It also provided a nice pool of potential story ideas, and several in-depth student features arose from that group of submissions.
- The Few-Glasson Alumni Society continues to be a useful tool in engaging alumni and supporters.
- Our promotion of the anniversary helped us sharpen the way we discuss The Graduate School’s importance to Duke’s history and excellence, which has helped us in our communication and development efforts.
In many ways, the work we did in celebrating the school’s 90th anniversary was a springboard toward putting the school on even stronger footing as it approaches its 100th birthday.
