Attendance rates for fall semester Student Life events have dropped overall since last fall, according to preliminary numbers from the department.
Several factors could have contributed to the decrease in attendance including not targeting events to commuter students, less students living on campus and event advertising not effectively reaching the student population, according to campus leaders.
The lower engagement this semester continues a trend started last semester. The previous Director of Student Engagement, Stephen Cucchiara, noted in April that budget issues caused a decrease in student engagement in the spring semester after an already “rocky start” to the semester, according to previous reporting from The Scribe. While student engagement is usually lower in spring semesters than in fall semesters, the decrease last semester was lower than normal.
State of Student Life
Preliminary data shows that attendance for Clyde’s Kickoff, a seven-day-long program filled with events targeted at freshmen, international students, transfer students and graduate students was down overall compared to last fall. Seven of the eight events showed a decrease in attendance. Some events, such as Movie Madness, had almost half of the attendance (154) compared to last year (283).
Attendance for events post-kickoff have been mixed. While events like the Fall Concert and the Homecoming Tailgate have had higher engagement compared to last year, the Club Fair had almost 800 less students in attendance, although this may be due in part to inclement weather that caused the event to end early this year.
Student Engagement Leader Aiden Provenzano chalks up the lack of attendance for events, especially Clyde’s Kickoff, to a communication system that’s not streamlined to students in addition to stale events that mostly cater to freshmen and students living on campus and not the majority of the student body, which are commuter students.
“Overall, it’s just time to get some new stuff in,” he said. “Dating Doctor, [a Clyde’s Kickoff event], in my opinion, should be scrapped. It’s just kind of a guy yapping, and he’s already been around for three or four years.”
Sophomore student Ethan Orr and Alyssa Austin, a student pursuing a certificate at UCCS, agree that events are catered to younger students and said they would attend more laidback events. Austin gave the example of a recipe swapping event or a cooking class. “[Events on campus] feel sort of high schoolish,” Austin said.
Another reason for decreased engagement could be that less students are living on campus compared to last year. Residential housing was down about 300 beds during the kickoff compared to last fall, according to Director of Student Engagement Noelle San Souci. She noted that there is a correlation between low attendance for events that have traditionally been attended by students living on the campus and the reduced on campus students.
San Souci said Student Life has been working to reimagine and redo some events, especially Clyde’s Kickoff. The department has also started collaborating more with clubs and other organizations like SGA for fresh ideas and better events.
“We’re always trying to bring new ideas for events, but we’re also kind of dealing with the fact of trying to maintain campus tradition. It’s about trying to find a balance between those two things, and I think we’re getting there,” said Graduate Assistant for Student Engagement Camryn Palmer.
Palmer and San Souci have found that trivia events, specifically themed trivia, have been successful in getting both on campus and commuter students to attend. They have also been working on marketing and updates for Clyde’s Five, a program that tracks engagement and gives students recognition from the university for their involvement.
San Souci said students have been constantly asking about the program, which was piloted last spring, so the interest in it is very high. The program itself is separated into five tracks to get students more involved on campus.
To complete each track, students must accomplish the items, such as attending an event, within that track. Once a student completes the program, they will receive a Clyde’s Five graduation stole and be recognized at the spring ROAR Awards. Once the updates are completed, San Souci said the department will start their marketing campaign for the program.
Just getting some events out of the gate have been difficult, according to San Souci. On top of funding constraints and being down three staff members within the department, San Souci said the department is struggling to get spaces for the events.
“There’s not a lot of great event space on this campus, so it’s in high demand, and we’re competing with clubs, they’re competing with us [and] we’re competing also with a lot of other departments on campus,” she said. “So, we’re having to get creative, and sometimes we’re just not in the best space for the event that we’re holding.”
Event marketing and feedback
While San Souci said Clyde’s Five provides a good road map on how to get more engaged, she said it’s always a “hit or miss” on what students want for events.
The department tries to get feedback from students through surveys, but San Souci notes it’s been difficult to nail down what most students want. “They all want something different, and then they never show up when they tell us what they want,” she said.
Attendance for focus groups meant to incorporate student feedback for Student Life events has also decreased, according to engagement leaders.
On Sept. 25 and 26, student engagement leaders hosted two focus groups to collect feedback on Clyde’s Kickoff events. The focus groups were posted on Mountain Lion Connect and provided free pizza to encourage attendance, but no student showed up both days.
Student Engagement Leader Savoy Garey felt that marketing on MLC for the focus groups was successful and hoped that attendance rates would be similar to previous focus groups, which typically had between 10 and 20 students in attendance.
“We have a lot of people who are in Student Life who have been a part of most of these events on campus, so I think we have a pretty good understanding, from our perspective at least, of how well they went and what could be improved, but, obviously, [the] student perspective is important,” Garey said.
Orr feels that MLC is difficult to navigate. First year students Hannah Frank and Emma Moothart said they don’t use MLC, adding they get their information for campus events through the UCCS Instagram page or their RAs.
Provenzano said that engagement leaders were encouraged to use NearPeer, a third-party social media app that connects students attending UCCS to other students with common interests, this year at the request of campus administration to communicate and promote events, including Clyde’s Kickoff. He said communicating with the students in his group during the kickoff was an “awful process” because of the extra steps new students had to take to be able to communicate with engagement leaders. Provenzano said the app was not popular among other engagement leaders as well.
He feels that relying on NearPeer for marketing events isn’t a strong enough communication method, which hurt the attendance for the focus groups and Clyde’s Kickoff. He thinks that streamlining the communication and marketing to students’ phones via text messaging or social media that students use regularly like Instagram would be more effective.
Palmer, who works with marketing for Student Life, said social media marketing has helped with engagement more than print marketing — especially for commuter students, since they aren’t on campus all the time.
The department also implemented a text chain two years ago, which communicates event details to students who are opted in. Palmer said it’s been largely successful in increasing event attendance, noting that they have about 2,100 students opted into the system, which only costs around $4,000 a year.
Students can be added to the text chain by texting “students” to 71444 for a weekly event calendar of upcoming events at UCCS.
Photo courtesy of the UCCS Photography Database.