Alumni Wel­comed Back for I Heart BU Week

Note to read­ers: the orig­i­nal ver­sion of this story, pub­lished in print form and dis­trib­uted on Feb. 19, con­tained in­cor­rect num­bers for alumni at­ten­dance and do­na­tion amounts. Those num­bers are cor­rected here. 

MISHAWAKA—For the sec­ond year in a row, Bethel has hosted a week-long event ded­i­cated to the alumni of the uni­ver­sity. This week, sched­uled around the week of Valen­tine’s Day, is called, “I Heart BU Week.”  

Emily Sher­wood, Di­rec­tor of Alumni Re­la­tions, is the co­or­di­na­tor of this event. She and the Alumni Of­fice have three pur­poses for putting on this event. 

“I would say the biggest pur­pose is to gen­er­ate do­na­tions from alumni and friends,” said Sher­wood. 

Sher­wood says the sec­ond pur­pose is to re­mind alumni why they love Bethel and who they love at Bethel. Much of this can be seen on Face­book and In­sta­gram, where posts are shared ac­knowl­edg­ing the cam­pus, men­tors, pro­fes­sors, and the com­mu­nity. These posts can be found un­der the hash­tag #iheartbu. 

The third pur­pose is to al­low alumni back to cam­pus so they can ap­pre­ci­ate every­thing they ex­pe­ri­enced again. Last year, alumni were in­vited to a home bas­ket­ball game free of charge. This year, with COVID-19 re­stric­tions, the Alumni Of­fice had to come up with some­thing dif­fer­ent. 

In­stead, alumni who wel­comed back to the col­lege re­ceived an open house tour of the new Lehman Fam­ily Train­ing Cen­ter. They were in­vited to bring their friends and fam­ily to the event to see the new build­ing and track fa­cil­i­ties. Neigh­bors who live around the uni­ver­sity are also wel­come to the open house tours.  

The tours, split into four groups, were held on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 13 be­tween 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. About 90 alumni came back for this event, and over $13,000 has been do­nated to the uni­ver­sity. Any per­son who do­nated was en­tered to win a Grub­Hub gift card sent out on Feb. 14.