Homecoming week started Wednesday, Feb. 4 and lasted until Saturday, Feb. 7. The event has been evolving through the years as the time it is held has changed. Alumni and student organizations worked together to improve the event.
Moving of Homecoming
Wright State University’s (WSU) Homecoming is mainly sponsored by the Alumni Association and various on-campus student organizations. Spring semester, however, has not always been the prime time for the homecoming event.
In a 2022 press release, WSU announced that the event, formally in the fall, would be moving to the spring semester for the 2023 school year. The decision to move the event was reportedly made to bring more alumni and student involvement, at the time. Originally, homecoming would coincide with club football and soccer in the fall. When the move happened, it allowed homecoming to happen in the spring instead and be paired with basketball.
According to Associate Director of Alumni and Donor Marketing and Communications, Brooke Leppla, this change has seen great success with involvement and event planning potential.
“We feel it's been a great move. Our alumni engage the most with us during basketball season,” Leppla said. “That coupled with the alumni zone perks and other programming we already had in the winter that we moved to homecoming weekend, has really made an impact on our alumni participation. I think the students like it, too. It's just led to so many more options for programming.”
Every year there is a large amount of planning that goes into this event.
According to Leppla, planning for homecoming week starts shortly after the previous one ends. During this planning, they discuss comments and work towards improvements.
“We start planning for the next almost immediately following the current one,” Leppla said. “We will have a debrief meeting with all involved to evaluate what worked and what we could improve on and any feedback from our students and alumni, and then we get started planning after that.”
Although the Alumni Association gets involved in planning the event, the University Activities Board (UAB), a student run organization that holds many events on campus, is responsible for several other homecoming events.
According to UAB president and Nursing Major, Emelee Porter, it is very rewarding to plan and participate in events and encourages students to participate in future planning.
“It’s actually a lot of fun,” Porter said. “Some people are like ‘I don't want to go to homecoming,’ but I really enjoy it. I think it’s fun to go with friends to events. UAB is a good way to get involved if you enjoy planning events."
The efforts of these organizations have been shown to pay off, as students like Taylor Pendleton, an English major, said she and her friends had a great time at several homecoming events.
“It was our first time ever interacting with homecoming,” Pendleton said. “I was always told it was lame and to not go, but we decided to take a chance on it, and we really enjoyed our time.”
Pendleton and her friends attended the kickoff, chili cookoff, the basketball game and the dance. Pendleton stated that she was appreciative about WSU's events and how they were planned.
“I don’t think we had a single complaint about any of the events we attended, everything ran fairly smooth,” Pendleton said. “Everything we went to seemed like they were thought out, I feel like with large events like homecoming, there are going to be a ton of issues due to how many people attend them, but if there were any issues, we didn’t see them.”
Student and Alumni involvement is heavily encouraged when it comes to the further evolution of the event.
“I think, as always, that graduation is not the end of your experiences in the Wright State community. In fact, it can be the beginning of a new chapter if you choose so. From homecoming, and all year round, we have so many fun and engaging things to do and perks for our alumni. We offer opportunities to connect, network and just have fun. We work really hard to welcome our alumni home each year,” Leppla said.
