University Advancement announces Mary Washington First Campaign gifts and pledges:

• A gift of $265,777 to endow a new student scholarship was received from the estate of an alumna of the Class of 1959.
• A $9,886 grant was received from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund to enable UMW faculty to attend the 2015 Jessie Ball duPont Seminars.
• More than $31,000 in gifts have come in to endow the Robert Ericson Environmental Research Fund.

The $50-million Mary Washington First Campaign began July 1, 2011, and went public April 26, 2014. As of May 15, 2015, Mary Washington alumni, parents, friends, faculty, staff, and businesses have committed nearly $40 million in gifts and pledges. The Campaign is scheduled to conclude June 30, 2016. Visit http://umw.edu/marywashingtonfirst or call 540/654-1024 for more information.

The University of Mary Washington’s Office of Admissions will be hosting three Phone-a-thons this month (see dates below).

Thursday, May 14
Tuesday, May 19
Wednesday, May 20

Volunteers are needed to make follow-up calls to confirmed students reminding them of important next steps towards enrollment (i.e. First Year Questionnaire submissions, Housing and Dining Agreement submission, and Orientation registration). Training will begin at 5 p.m. each evening in the Admissions conference room in Lee Hall.  Telephone calls will begin at 5:30 p.m. and run until 7 p.m.  Refreshments will be provided.

For additional information and registration, contact Director of Admissions, Melissa Yakabouski at 540-654-2000 or myak@umw.edu.

Winners of the Virginia Public Service Week drawings of $100 Macy’s gift cards:

Tuesday’s winner:  Michael Jackson
Wednesday’s  winner:  Erin Metcalf
Thursday’s  winner:  Cris Dargan
Friday’s winner: Summer Phillips

 

2015 UMW Award Winners

Charles Coleman Memorial Service Award
Charles Coleman was an employee of 29 years who demonstrated pride, dedication, and loyalty throughout his many years of service. This award was established in honor of his dedication and exemplary service.

The 2015 Coleman Award Winner is Cathy Byram, Office Manager
Cathy helps keeps the Department of English, Linguistics, & Communication running smoothly. This year, especially, Cathy took on extra and unusual projects to help the department until a new full-time Office Manager could be hired. She served on the hiring committee, reading applications and participating in the interviews with candidates.  During the period when the Department of English, Linguistics, and Communication did not have an Office Manager, Cathy was a driving force in getting the office cleaned, reorganized, and in a welcoming condition for the new hire. All in ELC are indebted to Cathy for her excellent attention to details and being willing to help solve problems as they emerge.  Cathy’s Champion is Mary Rigsby.

Coleman Nominees

Timmy Wallace, HVAC Supervisor
Champion is Dan Quann
Timmy has shown great dedication and loyalty to the university, over the years by hard work and growing within his job and within his department.  Timmy has always had the can do attitude, he steps up and takes on anything asked of him.

Kathy Sandor, Bookstore Manager
Champion is Erma Baker
Kathy is proud to tout the store as UMW brand central for campus, and represent the retail arm of our UMW family business.  Kathy truly leads her team by example and always with the best interest of UMW in mind.

 

Richard V. and Rosemary A. Hurley Presidential Commendation
The intent of this award is to honor Mr. and Mrs. Hurley, who have consistently demonstrated a desire to recognize and reward outstanding service of University employees, and who have led by example in their work at Mary Washington.

The 2015 Hurley Award Winner is Martha Burtis, Alum and Director of the Digital Knowledge Center
Martha has gone above and beyond in helping improve course materials.  She took on a survey project that took over two years to complete. Throughout, she was proactive and incredibly inventive.  For instance, she developed a new WordPress Plugin. The project is so successful that it has now garnered national attention.  As the Director of the new DKC, Martha has also been a huge help to UMW students.  Students rave about their experiences with DKC tutors.  More importantly, their work is substantially improved.  In short, Martha’s work is a huge boon to faculty and students alike.

Martha has created DTLT’s new Digital Knowledge Center, which has been absolutely essential to the learning experiences of students.  Students are increasingly using digital technologies and new media, which require resources and a support system outside the classroom.  Martha is helping our students become digitally savvy; giving them the tools and resources they need for the future, whether graduate school or the job market.

Richard V. and Rosemary A. Hurley Presidential Commendation Nominees

Sallie Braxton
Assistant Dean for Advising
She loves this university and will do whatever she can to help students, faculty and staff to achieve our mission. We are blessed to have her in the College of Business AND at the University of Mary Washington.

Bethany Friesner
Associate Director of Residence Life for Staffing and Residential Education
Bethany is incredibly dedicated to helping students engage in learning experiences while living in University housing.  In the last couple of years she has created and developed the Living Learning Community program which led to a University-wide initiative connecting living on campus with active learning and faculty relationships

Zafeer Mobashar
Audio Visual Tech
Zafeer is steadfast in all his tasks; whether videotaping a message from one of UMW’s donors or setting up sound and lights for an event.   Zafeer always stay one step ahead of the weekly events.

Allyson Moerman
Associate Vice President for Finance and Controller
She is ALWAYS willing to take the time to explain a concept to her own employees, someone else’s employees, students, faculty, staff, etc., and she does it with incredible patience.  She listens to concerns from all areas and tries to make quick but sound decisions for UMW.

Joni Wilson
Director Landscape and Grounds
Joni goes above and beyond to not only create a beautiful, healthy campus environment, but to initiate, innovate, and continue efforts to improve the environment, make UMW more sustainable, and connect her department to faculty and students.

John Wiltenmuth
Associate V.P. for Facilities Services
If it is 3:00 AM and there is an emergency on campus, you will always find John onsite, working alongside his staff bailing water, mopping floors, overseeing an excavation or running a snow blower, relieving staff and sending them home or inside to rest while staying on the job himself.

It’s a little more than just “hanging out on Facebook” all day. UMW’s social media team has been busy expanding the university’s reach on social media one tweet, post and photo at a time. We’ve learned that despite having carefully curated content, sometimes all it takes is a picture of a squirrel to break the internet and a post with Dean Rucker will break records any day. Here’s a snapshot of our results for the 2014-15 academic year:

Twitter
We grew our Twitter presence by 18% this past year, increasing from 2,800 to 3,317 followers. We’re using #UMW and #MyMaryWash to talk about our university and staying in touch with our incoming Class of 2019 with #UMW19. We ended the year with 850 re-tweets, 977 favorites and 1,619 mentions. Check out some of our most popular tweets from the year:

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Facebook
Despite a slight dip on our Facebook followers (we lost 537 when Facebook removed inactive accounts), we were still able to increase our total followers by 4%, from 18,534 to 19,352 followers. We reached an average of 74,671 people per month with a record number of 149,273 in April. And we engaged an average of 9,205 people per month with likes, comments, shares and clicks.

Instagram
We’ve seen the most success this year on Instagram with a 47% growth rate over the past academic year, from 1,255 to 1,842 followers. Photos of Dean Rucker and the fountain topped the charts for most liked photos and we ended the year with a total of 9,858 likes. Here’s the picture of the fountain that topped our records for most likes on a post this year:

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is becoming even more relevant to us with its new YOUNIVERSITY platform for higher education.  As in, Admissions and LinkedIn might soon be friends. This year, we created a team of content contributors from across campus to update the page and increased our followers from 18,226 to 20,119, a 10% growth rate. We’re still working on collecting the numbers on impressions.

YouTube
YouTube was our project for the semester as revamped and branded our account. Today we’re at 18,917 views and 54 subscribers and we’re excited to watch those numbers soar.

Statistics reflect data measured between September 2014 and April 2015.

As the academic year comes to a close, we thought it was a good time to reflect on all of the work UMW’s social media team has accomplished over the past year. Let’s start with three hashtag campaigns that got our students tweeting about our university:

#UMWFinals Campaign (December 2014)
We launched our first hashtag campaign during finals week of the fall semester using #UMWFinals to encourage students to share their last week of the semester with us. Students were encouraged to show us their finals projects and favorite places to study… and they did! Over five days, #UMWFinals was used 200 times and the resulting Storify received 230 views. Shout out to our Social@UMW group that helped promote the campaign!

#UMWSnowDay Campaign (February 2015)
It took a while, but when our campus was finally covered in frozen flakes on February 17, our social media team was ready with a #UMWSnowDay campaign. Between snow ball fights and snow angels, our students shared pictures of their snow day festivities. In just one day, the hashtag was used 86 times. The posts were collected into a Storify that received 1,079 views.

#UMW15 Campaign (May 2015)
To celebrate our Class of 2015’s special day, we used #UMW15 as the official hashtag and collected content into a Tweetwall that was shared at the undergraduate commencement. In total, we collected 1,045 tweets that reached 171,968 people. The hashtag was also popular on Instagram, where it was tagged 515 times in the five weeks leading up to graduation.

 

We do more than just tweet all day though. Here are a few other things our team has been busy putting in place this year:

Launched a new Social Media Policy
With a social media presence spanning 130 accounts (and we’re still counting), UMW’s social media team developed a policy keep its social savvy community thriving, our brand story, and our accounts in compliance with state and federal laws.

Created a Directory Submission Form
While we would have liked to get a social media directory live this year, we made steps towards our goal by setting up a submission form so anyone running a UMW social media account can add their accounts to the directory. We’ll keep the work going this summer, stay tuned!

Revamped UMW’s YouTube Presence
With the help of our new video intern, our team was able to turn UMW’s YouTube page around with branded images and a new series of Great Minds videos featuring our passionate students, faculty and alumni.

Campus Fire Safety will be testing UMW’s fire alarm systems this summer. The schedule for the tests is as follows:

1004 College Avenue – Monday, June 15

1201 William Street – Monday, June 15

Annex A/B – Tuesday, June 16

Anderson – Tuesday, June 9

Belmont – Wednesday, June 10

Brent – Wednesday, June 17

Brompton – Thursday, June 11

Dahlgren – Wednesday, June 10

DuPont – Friday, June 12

Eagle Village – Tuesday, June 2 to Friday, June 5

Fairfax – Wednesday, June 17

Framar – Monday, June 29

George Washington – Monday, June 8

Goolrick – Tuesday, June 9

Hamlet – Wednesday, June 17

Heating Plant – Wednesday, June 17

Jefferson – Thursday, June 11

Jepson – Friday, June 12

Jepson Alumni Executive Center – Thursday, June 18

JMLO – Monday, June 15 and Tuesday, June 16

Marye – Monday, June 8

Parking Deck – Tuesday, June 16

Ridderhof-Martin – Friday, June 19

Seacobeck – Friday, June 19

Simpson – Friday, June 19

South – Monday, June 29

Tennis Center – Thursday, June 18

Tyler – Wednesday, June 17

UMW Apartments – Monday, June 22 to Friday, June 26

Virginia – Monday, June 1

Westmoreland – Monday, June 1

Willard – Monday, June 15 and Tuesday, June 16