There is a special website designed in celebration of the 175th Anniversary of Longwood University. The website is http://175.longwood.edu. There are many things to do at this website, such as taking quizzes, sharing your favorite memories and looking at a timeline of our school's history.
Public Relations Media Specialist Matthew McWilliams is a member of the 175th Anniversary Committee. He said, “The website is a place [where] alumni, friends of the college, community members, staff and students are able to have this natural place where everybody can go.”
Among the staff working on this website are Director of Web Communications for Public Relations Dave Hooper, Web Designer for Public Relations Kevin Bryant and Multimedia Specialist for Public Relations Andrea Dailey.
“The ideas for starting the website started about early last spring or late last fall. We really started working on the website this summer, and then we kicked it off to faculty and staff as a residential welcome, which was the Friday before the students came back to school. Then, we revealed it to the students at the G.A.M.E.,” McWilliams said.
He continued, “The ideas for the modules came from all of us. I knew for sure we wanted to have some things looking backwards and forward. We wanted to incorporate memories, as well. Some of the other members of the team came up with some really good ideas as well, such as the then and now photos and the quiz. Then we started developing the hashtag #Longwood175 and it all just came together from there.”
Longwood has a lot of history, and the staff was unable to put every event on the timeline. However, they tried to pick the ones that they believe mattered the most to people. “We also wanted to get a representative sample from each era and things that sort of span the whole time frame,” said McWilliams.
McWilliams also created the LongwoodIQ Quiz. He said, “The idea was to put together a quiz that was kind of fun on some levels, but on the same levels kind of challenging.” There's a quiz on the 175th Anniversary website that is called “What’s Your LU IQ?” It's a series of questions to see how much information you know about Longwood and its history.
“I just started coming up with different questions and came up with …50 questions and about half of them are fairly easy, and the other half are somewhat hard Then, there are some extremely hard ones. This just came from going through old Longwood materials and looking through the website for little factoids and things.”
In this project, there has been a lot of support from many different people. “We have been getting a lot of support from alumni who have been contributing memories. When they start sending in what they remember, then we start tweeting it,” McWilliams said.
He continued, “The information and memory statements in the memory bank actually came from alumni. We also sent it out through Facebook and Twitter, and then that caused many other alumni to send in memories.”
In one of the modules, people can even send in video stories about their experience with Longwood University. These videos get put on the website, and then they are posted on YouTube.
There's also a hashtag that you can use to tweet when you’re at Longwood events. “Many people have been using the #Longwood175 hashtag, and there's actually a section on the website where you can go and view other people using the hashtag. We've also been promoting a lot of things with the hashtags such as our t-shirts,” McWilliams said.
The 175th Anniversary website is a good way to look at our past and see how far we've come as a school and a community. Take the quiz and see how much you know about Longwood, and take some time to record a video about how you found Longwood and decided to attend the school. Share some of your favorite memories from your experiences here and celebrate our school’s anniversary.
