First Year Programs & Husky Kickoff

Erin Allett

The Beginning of a Beautiful Relationship:
First Year Programs, Meet Athletics. Athletics, Meet First Year Programs.

After a great training session with the brand-spanking new Husky Street Team last week, the team is hitting the ground running in figuring out this whole "strategic grassroots campus marketing" thing.

I reached out to LeAnne Wiles-Jones from UW First Year Programs about the HST promoting our fall sport programs at the upcoming Dawg Daze (actually Robert Carroll's area of focus, but LeAnne hooked us up with his contact info) and the annual Husky Kickoff at Dempsey Indoor. Husky Kickoff is a tradition at UW where the entire incoming freshman class is invited to attend and get their photo taken on the field of Husky Stadium in the shape of our icon "W."

First Year Programs Mission: 

We empower entering students to become engaged and confident learners by facilitating supportive communities and creating educational experiences.

There are events happening all over campus - and even in our own Athletics backyard! - that we have never had a presence at before. That's back to change thanks to our HST.

LeAnne and I exchanged a few excited, albeit brief emails giving both of our responsibilities this time of the year, emails about developing a strong relationship between First Year Programs and Athletics. Our plan is to reconnect during October or November and dive into brainstorming and an approach to the remainder of 2013-14 to craft ideas, discuss ways to piggyback on and enhance preexisting programming, execute those that we can, and dream up plans for a partnership in 2014-15. FYP begins their planning after the New Year.

HST was a bit slow to the game on getting into these events to promote fall sports. We were able to distribute upwards of 500 "This Week In Husky Athletics" flyers which made sure that freshmen know that Olympic sports are free with their Husky card.

While we were slow to the game on this first crack at it, we are cognizant that we are a start-up. We're going to grow, learn, make some mistakes, and keep improving to work toward our goals. Our goals throughout the course of this first year will change as we grasp our task at hand. The HST will figure out how to execute grassroots marketing effectively and efficiently - and have a hell of a lot of fun in the process!