FOR RELEASE: Thursday, December 14, 2006
Recreation Students Assist in Holiday Kickoff
Merry Moiseichik gave the city of Fayetteville an early gift this holiday season. The University of Arkansas associate professor of recreation loaned her master's class of recreation students to the Chamber of Commerce and Fayetteville Convention and Visitors Bureau to help plan the annual parade that kicks off the Lights of the Ozarks and the Holiday Hoops high school basketball tournament.
Shelly Stewman, tourism sales manager at the Fayetteville Convention and Visitors Bureau, came to Moiseichik last summer in search of student interns. Moiseichik regularly provides consulting services to communities to help them provide high-quality recreation services. Recreation faculty and students work with at least one community each year to conduct studies involving risk management, feasibility, benchmarking, needs assessment and administrative reviews.
Moiseichik put the recreation students in the sport management concentration to work on the Holiday Hoops tournament while the recreation management students planned the parade. Stewman visited the class each week to work on the projects.
"We discussed how to use an event as a marketing tool," Stewman said.
A business new to Fayetteville introduced itself through participating in the parade, she explained.
'The students were a great help in the process," she continued. "They were so creative, thinking of groups and businesses we had not thought to ask to participate."
Not all of the groups the students contacted took part, but Stewman believes they laid important groundwork for the future, helping to ensure continued success of the parade. The students carried the process through to the end, setting the order of floats in class the week before the Nov. 18 event and lining the vehicles up the night of the parade. One was Santa's elf.
Students in the recreation management concentration – Courtney Coleman, Mandy Blackwood, Heather Contant-Nelson, Cephoni Jackson, James Polfer, Kevin Kyzer and Chad Leach - assisted with the parade.
Students in the sports management concentration – Shanean Jones, Caitlin Chandler, Robert Rawlings, Justin Slaughter, Justin Cato, Sharon Hurley, Rochelle Vaughn and Allison Singleton – assisted with the Holiday Hoops event that took place Dec. 7-9 at Bud Walton Arena.
Their challenge was to get college students to attend a high school event. They set up eight treasure hunts of significant gifts, one to be given away at each selected game in the tournament. Hints for the prizes were given on the scoreboard, and students had to use all the hints to find the gifts.
Gifts included book scholarships and an MP3 player from the UA bookstore, Houndstooth clothing, a portable DVD player from Best Buy, gift certificates from Doe's, Noodles, Campus Bookstore, Hastings, Chili's, Starbucks, Buffalo Wings and ShoGuns.
Moiseichik believes it is important for students to get out and work in the community while they are studying. The process connects theory to practice, she said, enabling them to learn what is expected in the profession and to make contacts.
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Contact:
Heidi Stambuck, director of communications
College of Education and Health Professions
575-3138, stambuck@uark.edu