Thursday, August 31, was our last tour of the fall welcome tour series, and it was a huge success!

We held 11 tours between 8/15/2023 and 8/31/2023 with registrations capped at 12 for each. We had participants show up for every scheduled tour and a total of 107 participants over 3 weeks.

The tours held during Welcome Week were the most popular. Registrations were full, students came even if they weren’t registered, and they brought friends. We averaged 15.75 people per tour during that week. Once classes started, registrations were still full but with a little drop-off in attendance. We averaged 8.5 people per tour. This week, the second week of classes, had the lowest registrations, with an average of 3 people per tour.

Thank you to all tour guides who volunteered and led tours! My groups were very engaged and I heard that was the case with others as well. We love it!

Thank you to Special Collections and Archives for having materials available and giving short intros for tour participants. That was a highlight.

Thank you to Shannon Cary for the marketing and inclusion of tours in the Welcome Week calendar- I think that really brought people out.

Thank you to Megan Ballengee for putting together gift bags that we gave all participants. The gift bags included flyers, bookmarks, stickers, candy, etc., and participants loved them.

Special award to Anne Barker for leading the smallest, longest tour of the series- she had 2 people on 8/30 who were so engrossed that they were gone for 90 minutes! A search party was sent out and they were located in Special Collections, having a great time.

–Abbie Brown