DawgDen rolls out a new rewards program

With the lack of events happening on the physical campus, Student Involvement and the DawgDen has rolled out a new program aimed at promoting virtual events and distanced involvement with the UW Tacoma campus. The program, called Dawg Bones, is officially out now and students who earn Dawg Bones garner chances to win prizes.

Assistant Director of Student Involvement Conor Leary has supervised the rollout of the new program. In doing so he has stated that he hopes that DawgDen can be a centralized source of involvement for students to see and engage with, and DawgBones is one answer that they are putting forth.

“We want students to know that we want them involved, even with a lot of our programs being virtual this quarter,” Leary said. “The big thing for me has been trying to push the idea of gathering all event information and involvement information on DawgDen a great deal more in order to give students that one-stop-shop for all things involvement … Dawg Bones is an attentive-based program that rewards you for going to programs, being a part of organization or experiences on DawgDen.”

Students can earn Dawg Bones through several means; they can enroll in a program, participate in a lecture-style event hosted by a UWT organization or even by dropping off food for The Pantry. Each way in which students earn Dawg Bones is different: some events might require simply signing in and attending the event while others might require students to fill out a reflection sheet of the event. Students can also earn Dawg Bones for every hour of civic engagement and service that they participate in. Events such as lectures or workshops will have students sign in, and the event organizer will report to DawgDen who was in attendance and thus who earns Dawg Bones.

Once students earn Dawg Bones, they will automatically be eligible to earn certain prizes based on how much they have collected. For instance, at 3,000 Dawg Bones students can earn a special Dawg Bones travel-size hand sanitizer. For every 100 Dawg Bones students will automatically be entered into a raffle for a travel mug and for every 500 bones students are entered into a raffle for a chance to win a t-shirt. 

“When students do reach those [prize] levels, our staff will work on coordinating with them if they can drop by the Student Center they can pick it up,” Leary said. “Or if they are at a great distance, we can mail it off to them.”

Another way in which students can participate to both earn Dawg Bones and be involved with the UWT community is by “experiences.” Experiences differ from online events that students can attend and instead focus on continual aspects of the campus, or aspects of the campus that happen throughout the year. Right now, for instance, students can participate in an experience where they submit a photo of themselves for a collage which will be put together to represent the normal “W” photo that is taken every year. 

Leary hopes that with the inclusion of the Dawg Bones points and reward system, more students will look at DawgDen to become engaged with the campus as well as weave events into students’ busy schedules, even if it is at a distance.

“A part of the Dawg Bones’ mission [is] to make sure that UW Tacoma students are logging onto Dawgden and exploring the involvement opportunities that Registered Student Organizations — but also UW Tacoma resources and departments —  add to the calendar of events,” Leary said. “We want to make DawgDen more of that informational center where students turn to when they are looking for an event to attend or opportunity to take part in.”

Students can check how to earn Dawg Bones, how much each event type gives, as well as see how many Dawg Bones they have accrued, at: uw-tacoma.presence.io/point/dawg-bones?id=86d757bb-71b1-481b-a96d-7ee993c609fa