Her Campus and their partner Contiki recently announced an amazing contest that we at HC Bryant couldn’t be more excited about! Whichever campus branch gets the most votes (click here to vote for us! – scroll down and select Bryant University) between Thursday, April 19th and Sunday, April 29th will win a free European vacation with Contiki for its Campus Correspondents!
My co-founder Hillary Coombs and I really want to win this contest! Please vote for us (scroll down and select Bryant University – and come back daily to vote again!) and if you care to know more about why we think we deserve to win, keep reading…
Why We Want/Deserve To Win
When I first came across Her Campus last semester, I couldn’t wait to get started. Hillary and I work together in my school’s Office of Planning and Institutional Research, and although I didn’t know her well at the time, I immediately thought that this was something she might be interested in too. Launching a whole new site/organization alone in my last semester of college seemed a little impractical, so I was delighted when Hillary agreed to apply as a co-founder/Campus Correspondent with me.
We got our “acceptance” letter in December and worked long hours over winter break (Skyping back and forth between Holiday celebrations with our families), getting ready for our February 7th launch. School started back just two weeks before our site went live, and at the time our “staff” consisted of just Hillary, another sophomore named Jessica Kline, and me. So we were delighted – and a little surprised – to get over 5,500 page views in our first week of going live. Not too shabby for a school of around 3,500!
As the saying goes… the rest was history. We started holding weekly meetings and our staff grew every week. We applied for and received recognition as an official campus organization. Toby Simon at the Hochberg Women’s Center agreed to fund our launch party, since we didn’t yet have a budget, and the event was a hit (especially the funny photo booth).
Here are a few more of our events and accomplishments so far:
- Our site receives between 800 and 5,500 views per week (2,644 on average), and consistently ranks in the top 10 schools (out of over 200 branches) for branch penetration, which is the number of unique page views a site receives versus the number of undergraduate female students at that school
- Less than two months after our launch, Hillary and I were honored with Women’s Herstory Awards for the contributions Her Campus Bryant has made to women at our school
- We’ve been featured in the Archway – our school newspaper – twice
- Our articles regularly make it onto the “top” articles section of the Her Campus home page
- We’ve had tables and/or presented at numerous on-campus events, including Admitted Students Open House and Research & Engagement Day
- Other events have included a staff appreciation day and a Stella & Dot trunk show
- We’ve raised nearly $1,200 for our school’s Relay for Life so far
In less than three months, we’ve grown to a staff of nearly 30 passionate, dedicated collegiettes and we couldn’t be prouder of the amazing work they’ve done to help us get to where we are today. Our new executive board – led by future Campus Correspondents Jessica Kline and Devon Correll – is doing an amazing job taking over, as I prepare to graduate (a month from today!) and Hillary gets ready to go abroad in the fall.
Hillary and I have poured our hearts and souls (and countless hours) into this organization, despite many personal challenges we’ve faced this semester. But the biggest reason we want to go on this trip is because – in the midst of long Saturday nights working to get our content uploaded, and calling each other multiple times a day with new ideas and updates – Hillary and I have become best friends. I affectionately refer to her as my “mini-me” because she is just as crazy-over-involved and passionate about everything she does as I am. But the truth is, I’ve learned just as much from her as I hope she has from me. I can’t imagine any better way to celebrate our successes and our friendship than with a 2-week trip to the Greek Islands.
Please help us to make this dream a reality! Click here to vote for us (scroll down and select Bryant University). You can vote once a day for the next 10 days, so please come back and vote daily! And please, share this with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, Email, and Pinterest.
Thank you for your support!!!