Institutional Culture is incredibly complex and will take a different view to staff than it does to students. Culture constitutes all parts of the institution – buildings, people that attend the university, people that work at the university, and the community that interacts with the campus.
Here are some things to think about:
1) Campus traditions – what’s homecoming like? distinctive events to your campus? (i remember the hillsborough hike from NC State)
2) student vernacular and “traditions” – (what do the students look forward to and talk about?)
3) Campus buildings and design – believe it or not, this says ALOT about the culture of the institution
4) Is the college connected to the community or separate from it?
Your events should connect with the student understanding of institutional culture and supplement their experience of that culture if you want to engage students.
