Airbrush Tees & New OLs

It has been waaaaaay too long since my last post.  I have no valid defense, aside from it's been VERY busy around these parts.   The past month has been filled with some new events, including Airbrush T-Shirts and Harrier Winter Gear.  Both of these events were hugely popular and we hope to bring them back next year!

Take a look at a few pictures from Airbrush T-shirts. This year we went with a different company called Anything Airbrushed and they were fantastic!  They gave us a pretty good price and provided some very cool Miami-specific designs.

Look at that line!

I also want to introduce you briefly to our new Orientation Leaders (OLs) for Spring 2012.  We had our first Orientation Leader Training for new leaders this week and we are already loving our new crew!  A couple of returning OLs also attended to brush up on information (and, let's be honest, enjoy the Chipotle lunch provided at the training) as well.  Here is the new crew (some returners are sprinkled in there as well):

Izabella, Thomas, Lance, Suzanne & Stefan.  Suzanne is one of our new Student Coordinators!  You'll meet her in a later post.

 Brian, Emily, Ali, Logan & Danny.  Emily is another Student Coordinator.

Lea, Ashley, Chuck, Alex & Rashad.   Lea is also a new Student Coordinator.  Student Coordinator post will be coming soon!

Our next Orientation Leader Training is in January, and I'll be sure to post pictures when that goes down.  Enjoy the holidays everyone, and see you in 2012!

NACA, Casino Night, & Buttons

Yikes, I owe you an update!  It's been almost two weeks since I last posted, but in my defense it has been a CRAZY two weeks.  Which brings me to my first point:  NACA!

NACA stands for the National Association of Campus Activities and is a professional association for professional staff and students who are involved in campus activities (i.e. what this blog is about).  I took five students to the regional "Mid-America" conference this past weekend and I have to tell you:  this ain't your momma's conference.  This conference is 9 am to midnight, constant action, constant entertainment and constant freebies!  Here is the group shot of the students and I: 

That's Jacqueline, Desiree, Nich, Shayna, Chuck and myself.  

We also met up with a couple of gals from Middletown: 

Gillian and Ashley joined us for this picture. 

The conference is basically set up into three different parts.  

1)  Breakout Sessions:  This is the learning part.  We attended presentations on recruiting members, campus activities on a budget, stress management, working with new constituents, social media, etc.  And we learned a LOT.  We make it a policy for everyone to create a summary of what we learned to take back to the group, so we can hopefully implement some of these ideas. 

2)  Showcases:  These are like humongous concerts / comedian shows / speakers / etc.  Various performers have 15 minutes each to dazzle the audience, and then hopefully the audience (all of whom works in campus activities at various colleges) will want to bring the performer back to campus for the whole student body.  We saw some amazing bands, hilarious comedians, and really touching speakers!  Here is one of the shows: 

3) Campus Marketplace:  Here is the opportunity for various vendors and agencies to wow us with their cool program ideas from airbrush winter hats to dancing head videos to Hawaiian smoothies and more.  It's usually a student favorite, and this year was no exception.  We walked away with teddy bears with our face on it, key chains with our pictures, and SO MUCH MORE!  Again, the idea is for us to learn as much as we can about these programs so that we can bring them back to our own campus.   One of the programs was all about bringing unique animals to campus.  Here's Chuck, with Mindy the monkey: 

So NACA was great, but exhausting.  Speaking of exhausting:  tomorrow is CASINO NIGHT!  

Casino Night is our very biggest program of the year.  We bring in an outside company that has all kinds of poker and other game tables AND the dealers AND a DJ.  We have amazing prizes ranging from a color printer to a webcam to a digital camcorder to DVD player and more.  This event is SERIOUS.  Tomorrow night (Thursday, November 17, 2011), 7 pm to 9:30 pm, Schwarm Commons.  Here are a few pics from last year, so you know what to expect: 

Best part?  It's FREE.  Every participant gets $50,000 in chips (ahem.  It's not real.  Come on, people.) and can gamble however they want.  Then you can turn in your chips for raffle tickets (1 ticket for every $10,000 in chips).  So actually, you could just come, get five raffle tickets, and enjoy the free food and DJ for the rest of the night without having to gamble at all.  But the idea is, the better you do gambling, the more opportunities you have to win a prize.  

And the prizes are set up so that you get to choose which prizes you'd like to try to win.   Genius!  

Last but not least, I want to tell you about an upcoming "Make & Take" event (see previous examples Toilet Paper Art and Dry Erase Boards).  This month, we are making "Button Monograms."  A monogram is basically your initial - first name or last name.  It's great for newly married people, babies, and college students!  

Here are a few of our inspiration pictures: 

Once again, I turned to my student worker Emily, to create an example Make & Take version using what we had in the office.  Here are the supplies she used:

That's a pad of scrapbook paper in the back, a hot glue gun, buttons, and scissors. She freehand drew a large "E" on an 8 1/2 x 11 piece of black cardstock, and then started going to town with hot gluing buttons. She chose fun shades of pink and some shiny jewels to accent.  

 Here is the finished product:

Slap a frame on that sucker and you're good to go!  Isn't it cute?!?   We'll be doing this event on Monday, November 21, 2011 from 12:30 pm to 2 pm in Schwarm Commons.  Stop by and make yourself one for free!

Harrier Sweatpants: Success!

Yesterday we had one of our most popular student activities of the year:  Harrier Sweatpants!  This event has continually garnered an overwhelmingly positive response from students and this year was no exception.  Our event started at 12 pm.   Here's what it looked like in Schwarm at 11:40 am:

People were lined up to the door by 11:45 am, so we decided to just start early.  Here's the premise of the event:  you swipe your student ID and receive a free pair of sweatpants. 

Turns out?  PEOPLE LOVE FREE SWEATPANTS.  Like, a lot.  We had 100 pairs of sweatpants and they were all gone after 30 minutes.

People then stuck around to use our tons of crafty supplies to decorate their sweatpants and make them awesome.  We had iron-on letters, puffy paint and stencils for people to use.  The iron-on letters proved to be extremely popular, given the line for the two irons (behind the table in the foreground):

People did some really cool designs on their sweatpants.  Take a look at some examples:

And today, someone stopped in to say thanks and she was wearing hers!

November is probably my favorite month for events - we have Casino Night coming up in a couple of weeks!

On Monday, we celebrated Halloween with some:

Costumes:

Cookie Decorating:

 Apple Bobbing:

and Pumpkin Painting!  Here's the winning Pumpkin:

 Adorable! 

Next week?  We're making cards for Veterans in celebration of Veteran's Day:

See ya there!

The Elephant in the Living Room

I'm sure most of you have heard about the tragedy in Zanesville, OH last week, but for those of you who don't, here's the quick and dirty version.

Terry Thompson, the owner of an exotic animal preserve in Zanesville, opened the cage doors of his dozens of lions, tigers, bears and more and then committed suicide. Police were obviously called, as these animals are dangerous to people.  They ended up shooting and killing nearly 50 of the animals, including 18 tigers, 17 lions, 8 bears, a baboon.  Six animals were captured and sent to the Columbus Zoo (including two monkeys, three leopards, and a bear).  Read more about the story in the journal-news, here. 

See more pictures here (beware, link contains very sad and disturbing images)

It just so happens that I had been working with the Miami Middletown Office of Student Activities for the past few months on bringing in the filmmaker and star of a documentary called "The Elephant in the Living Room," a film all about the controversial issue of raising dangerous animals as household pets.  Timely, huh? 

Set against the backdrop of a heated national debate, director Michael Webber chronicles the extraordinary journey of two men at the heart of the issue – Tim Harrison, a police officer whose friend was killed by an exotic pet; and Terry Brumfield, a big-hearted man struggling to raise two African Lions.  The film has been praised by critics as one of the best of the year. 

We'll be showing the film next Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 5 pm in the Harry T. Wilks Conference Center on the Miami Hamilton Campus.  Both Webber and Harrison will be available for questions and answers after the film. See the web events calendar for more details.

See a preview:

See http://www.theelephantinthelivingroom.comfor additional information about the film. Hope to see you there.

Cupcake Wars & Toilet Paper Art

Yesterday we tried a new event called "Cupcake Wars" in the Commons.  We had five or six students bake a bunch of cupcakes, and then we gave them out for free for students to decorate.  We also supplied the icing and other materials.  I am, as usual, blown away with how great the cupcakes turned out.  Students can be so creative!

I'm including a few pictures here to give you an idea of the kind of work that was done. Campus Activities Committee members will be voting on the "Best Overall" cupcake and awarding a bookstore gift card to the winner within in the next week.  Let us know which ones you think should win, too!

 

Now for the other half of this post's title:  Toilet Paper Art. We're hosting our second "Make and Take" event next week. 

 

I know whenever I tell people about making art out of toilet paper rolls, they kind of roll their eyes and say "greeeeat......." while silently thinking that it sounds terrible.  I agree, it doesn't sound quite as fun and exciting as cupcakes, but as you can see from our flyer above, you can really make some cool stuff, and basically for free!   

To demonstrate, I had my trusty student worker Emily create her own piece of art, while documenting the steps.  

Step One:  Gather supplies.  We've been collecting toilet paper and paper towel rolls for about 6 weeks now, in preparation for this event!  You'll also need scissors, a hot glue gun, and a canvas.  

  

Step Two:  Cut the roll into thin slices (you'll need to do this lots of times).  

 

Step Three: Use a hot glue gun to attach the strips, creating a flower look. 

 

 Step Four:  Paint the flowers, using whatever colors you want.  Emily painted a few of her flowers black and left a few unpainted as well.

 

Step Five:  Use the hot glue gun to attach your flowers to your canvas. 

 

Step Six:  At this point, you can bedazzle away.  Emily made vines of black glitter and attached jewels to the center.  Can you believe this was made out of toilet paper rolls?!?  

 

Be sure to join us for this event next week, or if you make one on your own, e-mail it to us so we can post your masterpiece!

365 Club: One Month Update

In case you missed this post, there are a bunch of folks here at Miami Hamilton who have all agreed to trying running at least one mile every single day for a year.  We started this project on September 1 and I thought I'd give you all a bit of a one month check-in so you can see how things are progressing. 

The first thing to note is that we have doubled the number of participants from 11 to 22... Although that number has shrunk with people who have dropped out.  Here's the list I have now:

My own experience has been pretty good.  I was experiencing some ankle pain during the first week or so, but I got new running shoes and the pain is almost completely gone.  I was also sick for a couple days in early September but I sucked it up and ran anyway.  The most miles I ran in one day was 5.50 (pretty early on), and I ran the absolute minimum of 1 on several days as well. Here's my official report from Garmin Connect (I have a fancy GPS watch that sends all of my running data to my account online):

The number I like best is at the bottom - I've burned 5,295 calories!  But it took me 8 hours.  Phew.  Makes me tired to think about it.

What I like most about running a mile a day is knowing that I'm at least doing something to be healthier every day.  What I don't like about it (besides that it's annoying sometimes to squeeze it in) is that I sometimes settle for only doing a mile when I know I could do more. But I've made it a goal to run at least three miles at least once a week this month. 

As for the rest of the 365 Club, I sent out an e-mail last week to gauge progress and it's as I expected - some folks have dropped it completely, some are going strong, and some have "modified" the rules to work for them.
 
I've heard back from 9 of 22 people who are still going strong, not missing any days except for the allotted sick days.  Those people include:  myself, Teresa, James G., Sue, Chris, Bob, Mark, Daniel and Suzanne.  Stephanie has modified the rules slightly to fit her lifestyle (the girl does two-hour spin classes at the YMCA .... running on top of that is crazy!).  I have heard officially of two people dropping it completely and I am assuming that another couple of folks have dropped as well. 

Overall, I think we're on the right track.  The people who have stuck with it have said that the miles are getting easier and easier.   We're planning a 50 day celebration in a few weeks.  I'll be back with another update at the end of October.  For now, we are:  one month down, eleven to go!  Wish us luck!