Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: California State University, Chico

Title of entry: Your Best Summer Ever

About this entry: The cover story for Chico Statements’ spring 2024 issue, “Your Best Summer Ever—The Wildcat Way,” invited our alumni audience to embrace adventures big, small, near, and far. Bringing the idea to life meant contacting over 50 alumni working in tourism and hospitality, land management, public service, recreation, and recreation-adjacent industries to create a fun and inspiring list of ideas, resources, and tips to suit any budget, appetite for adrenaline, and phase of life. Writer Luke Reid dreamed up and created a summer guide for alumni by our alumni, infusing a traditional summer guide with stories, locations, activities, and themes tailor-made for its nostalgic audience.

University photographer Jason Halley captured the story’s essence by using one of Chico State’s most beloved modes of transport, the bicycle, and loading it up with gear and elements from the guide. This included a surfboard, pool noodles, books, sunscreen, a deck chair, cooking utensils, gardening gear, luggage, a giant cooler, and more. The bicycle needed to look absurdly weighted down, almost clownish, and yet rideable. The bike had to mimic our call to action. To reinforce the latter point, Rick Kilby, a 2006 graduate of the kinesiology program who recently returned to Chico with spouse Simone and kids Max, Winona, and August, posed on the bike at picturesque Lower Bidwell Park (a historic alumni favorite). The photo’s captivating backdrop, along with the alumni family tie-in, perfectly set the tone for the magazine and sent a message: the adventure has already begun.