BU Athletics Marketing Wins NACMA Award for Women's Basketball's ASL Night
July 20, 2017 | General, Women's Basketball
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BOSTON - The Boston University Athletics marketing department has been honored by its peers with a gold medal in the category of Single Day Attendance Promotion from the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators (NACMA).
BU received the "Best Of" Award for group II thanks to American Sign Language Night, which took place in February for a women's basketball game against American at Case Gym. The promotion was a collaboration between the Department of Athletics, the School of Education's Deaf Studies program and the Office of Disability Services.
The theme began as a result of several women's basketball student-athletes who were enrolled in ASL classes and wanted to create an annual event that celebrated diversity and inclusion within the BU community, as well as highlight their interests off the court – more specifically, their academic pursuits in the deaf studies program.
"ASL Night has created language and cultural awareness, as well as a great opportunity for students to communicate with each other via American Sign Language," said Bruce Bucci, director of the deaf studies program in the School of Education. "In addition, it brought together deaf community members to give students an authentic experience and interactions with deaf people who are fluent in American Sign Language."
A team of American Sign Language Interpreters (Platform and Tactile, Deaf Blind) were on hand for the game and engaged and educated the crowd during halftime. Remote Computer Aided Real-Time Translation (CART) speech-to-text services both on a monitor and on mobile devices were provided to access play-by-play announcements.
"This game was a collaboration that reached well beyond the court," said JO Welch, coordinator of ODS deaf and hard of hearing services at BU.
Fan giveaways included pins and t-shirts that spell out "BU #1" as well as posters featuring photos of team members signing the ASL alphabet.
During its 26th annual convention in June, the NACMA Best Of Awards program honored outstanding achievement in marketing and promotions. Awards were presented in 14 categories, with each category divided into three groups based upon school size and conference affiliations to promote fairness. Nearly 1,000 entries were received for the 2016-17 year.
The BU Athletics marketing team is led by director of marketing & digital media Leo Paré and assistant director of marketing & promotions Nafeesa Connolly.
This is the third time – and second gold medal – that BU's marketing staff has earned a NACMA award for promotions. BU received gold in 2009 for Sponsorship Program and silver in 2010 for Single Day Attendance Program.
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