April 24, 2008
Which team is great? Student Fiscal Services Outreach, that’s who
They came, they saw, they bragged: The My Team is Great contest has a winner — a clever screencast by the folks at Student Fiscal Services Outreach, in Schmitz Hall.
The screencast, called Timmy’s Excellent Adventure, uses graphics and lively writing to tell of a UW freshman who was “completely stuck in 1984,” unaware of the convenience of handling his accounts online.
Timmy gets help understanding how to work the “magic box on his desk” (and gets assured that it’s not haunted, as he had worried) and learns to pays his tuition online. He finally “gets rid of his parachute pants” and comes out of the ’80s — a happy ending for all.
The screencast was one of many multimedia entries to the creative contest born of the Leadership, Community and Values Initiative, held from February through March.
“The variety of entries and their origins from all over the campus was really heartening,” said Harry Hayward, director of electronic media and special programs for the Media Relations and Communications Office, who oversaw the contest. “And the fact that we got so much participation from the medical center was terrific.”
Entries included videos, posters and PowerPoint presentations, including video of a rap song from the UW Medical Center’s Ambulatory Care Division and a poem called “Excellence Personified” offered by some Cougar-loving members of the Office of the Dean of Arts & Sciences. There was also a multi-stanza limerick-style poem offered by UW Medicine’s marketing team. You can see all the entries at http://www.washington.edu/discovery/myteam/.
Diane Cooley, associate director of Student Fiscal Services Outreach, headed the team that created the winning screencast. Her fellow team members were Kyra Worrell, Alan Shankle, Norm Englund and Arlene Lalas.
“Obviously, we have some creative people,” said Cooley. “Alan did the writing and I did the production and the rest of the team were editors and contributors. I’m really proud of the fact that it was a team effort.”
And why did they enter? She said, “When I saw the contest I thought, ‘I can’t pass up this opportunity to let the campus know what we do.'”
And that’s just what the contest was about, as Hayward said when it started: “It’s all about empowering staff to think about this set of shared values in a way that they might not otherwise.” He said he expects the contest to be held again next year.
