This January will herald the beginning of the sesquicentennial, a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the founding of DU in 1864. According to Kevin Carroll, vice chancellor of Marketing and Communications, the sesquicentennial will be a year-long celebration of the university.
The sesquicentennial was officially announced in an email from Chancellor Robert Coombe on Oct. 24, just before Homecoming & Family Weekend. Carroll said the celebration will begin in January and continue through Homecoming & Family Weekend next year, which will fall on Halloween weekend.
“Virtually every event on campus next year will have some connection to the sesquicentennial,” said Carroll. “We want everyone to make what they’re normally doing a little more special.”
Carroll added that there will be one or two events per quarter that will be given extra emphasis. In winter quarter, two of these events will be Winter Carnival and the Founders Week Celebration.
According to Carroll, Winter Carnival in 2014 will be open to faculty, staff, alumni and parents, as well as students. Keystone Resort will extend the same offers to non-students that they normally offer to students.
“No one is sure if we’ve ever done this before,” said Carroll. “But we hear from a lot of alumni that Winter Carnival is one of their best memories from DU.”
The first week of March will also be devoted to celebrating the founding of DU. Every year DU has a Founders Day Dinner on or around March 5, the day DU was founded. This year Founders Day will be extended to “1864 Week.” Committees are currently planning events for the week, which include the possibility of a fireworks show.
“If you’re on campus that week it’s going to feel like a special week,” said Carroll.
According to Carroll, this spring quarter will feel geared toward seniors and the big event will be Commencement. In the summer there will be a concert series open to families and neighbors of DU. Next fall quarter there will be a festival in September and a the celebration will conclude during Homecoming & Family Weekend.
These events will only be part of the sesquicentennial celebration. Other sesquicentennial-related resources, exhibits and competitions will also start to appear in January, according to Carroll.
In January, the university will launch a new Sesquicentennial and Alumni Network website. According to Carroll, the website will be the sesquicentennial website for the first year, and will then shift to become the alumni website.
Carroll said the website will include a scrolling Twitter feed, upcoming events sidebar, the history of the university, the history of campus buildings, an alumni online network and an interactive feature where people can post memories and favorite things about DU. The site will also be available on smartphones and tablets.
Carroll said the alumni online network is particularly exciting because nothing like it has existed at DU before. If someone is associated with DU on LinkedIn, they will automatically become a part of the network and be able to see other members of the network.
In January, the Anderson Academic Commons will also open a year-long History and Traditions Exhibit. The exhibit will include banners and audio/visual components, and tell the history of the university through its traditions.
Another year-long event will be the 1864 service challenge, which will allow members of the DU community worldwide to register and log the hours they contribute to their communities. The goal is to reach at least 186,400 service hours, according to Carroll.
“We want to convey to the communities in which we live that we are big contributors to those communities,” said Carroll.
Carroll added that there will be other surprises and contests throughout the year to make it feel like a special year. The university hopes to have a documentary filmed by one of the local media companies that would run all year. Merchandise will also be available in the bookstore and on the new website.
There will also be a graphic standard for sesquicentennial decorations and communications, with visual materials created by Senior User Experience Designer Ross Mansfield.
According to Carroll, several hundred people are working on the sesquicentennial in some way, shape or form. It is an effort that involves committees of faculty, staff, alumni and students.
The budget for the sesquicentennial celebration remains undisclosed. However, at least one third of the budget will be raised from sponsors, and the rest will come from reserve funds.
“We’re trying to not affect the university financially as much as possible,” said Carroll. “It’s a pretty modest amount of money, given that it’s such a big event.”
Carroll also discussed the history of the university that has led up to this event. President Abraham Lincoln appointed John Evans the second Governor of the Territory of Colorado during the Civil War. Evans and several others founded the Colorado Seminary, which would later become DU. This was six years after Denver was founded, and 12 years before Colorado became a state. In fact, the charter of the Colorado Seminary is in the Colorado Constitution.
Carroll also said there is a legend that the phrase “hip hip hooray” came from that first graduation, because the first graduate of DU was a man named John Hipp.
“It’s interesting if you look at the history of the school, it mirrors the history of the city,” said Carroll. “Good times for the city were good times for DU, and not so good times for the city were not so good times for DU.”
Carroll praised the resilience of the people at DU, in Denver and in Colorado.
“I think this is a great time to celebrate and reflect on what a wonderful institution we have, and frankly how far this institution has come from pretty modest beginnings,” he said. “We want [the sesquicentennial] to be fun, we want it to be academic and we want it to be celebratory.”
