Best of CASE District III Award
 

Institution: Virginia Tech

Title of entry: Going the Extra 183 Feet: An Alumni Engagement Success Story

About this entry: A hallmark event for the Virginia Tech College of Science is our annual Pi Day celebration on March 14. Each year on Pi Day, the College of Science embraces its inner geek to celebrate the mathematical constant Pi. Our Alumni Relations Director buys 2,000 small pies, our student ambassador team distributes them to students outside of the science buildings, we deliver them to the President and Provost and others.
In 2021, March 14 fell on a Sunday, as well as the last day of Spring Break. But we weren't about to give up our Pi Day presence. And University Advancement had set a goal of 22 percent alumni participation by 2022, so we wanted to find a way to use Pi Day to connect with alumni and drive up our participation numbers.
In early November 2020, with Alumni Relations and Communications/Marketing working hand in hand, we developed a plan for our first Pi Day 5k. We created a file of Pi Day humor and trivia for social media. We wrote and pre-loaded email lists. We got a mathematics professor to do a video calculating the difference between a 3.1 mile 5k, and a 3.14 mile Pi K (an extra 183 feet).
Our initial goal was 1 x Pi, or 314 alumni participants. We blew past that, then past 2 x Pi (628). In the end, we had 710 registrations. The Pi Day 5k was a big reason our alumni participation jumped an unheard-of 38 percent from 2020 to 2021.