College is about the experience, not just about academics. At their best, the events your students celebrate will become memories for a lifetime. For students, attending events can help build community and enhance communication skills. But to get there, you have to make a conscious and strategic effort to create engaging events on college campuses.
So, we looked into what events students actually gravitate to. We anonymized the most highly viewed event listings in our campus calendar software to bring you the most engaging campus event ideas to plan and strategize for.
Why Event Engagement Matters for Campus Marketers
The most engaging events on college campuses do more than just crowd a physical space. According to a 2023 survey, regularly participating in extracurricular events drives student satisfaction and, ultimately, retention. The more they get involved, the more likely they’ll be to stick around through graduation.
The benefit shines through before you even consider some of the more indirect benefits of engaging campus events (for marketers in particular). Better event attendance drives campus visibility and provides extensive opportunity to communicate just how fun and engaging attending your college or university can be. The best events provide endless content opportunities for social media posts, admissions materials, and more.
That’s why marketers should pay attention to what events tend to be most successful. It’s also why it helps to understand the trends among the most engaging events on college campuses today.
The Most Popular and Engaging Campus Events
It can be hard work to come up with engaging campus event ideas that go beyond the obvious. Let this list serve as an inspiration, helping marketers and student service professionals alike create a schedule of events your students will love.
1. Guest Lectures and Speaking Events
Academic lectures can go a long way toward enhancing the student experience. The bulk of speaking events were lectures about a wide range of academic and career-related topics. Take a look at your most popular lectures, and work with your alumni office to find successful graduates who would want to come back and share their story.
Don’t sleep on celebrity speaking events, either. TV hosts of popular sports or entertainment shows doing a Q&A can draw a massive crowd.
2. Campus Festivals
Some of the most engaging events on college campuses are also among the most challenging to plan. Festivals can draw in students, families, and alumni alike. Among the most popular are spring or fall family fests. But you can also go outside the box with options like a hot air balloon festival, a flower festival, or a music festival.
While they’re among the most engaging campus event ideas, they’re also resource-intensive and difficult to plan. Start with one festival a year and ensure its success to avoid overextending the offices involved.
3. Career Fairs
Students attending college are looking for a great experience, but they also need to justify their investment through great outcomes. Both niche and broad career fairs tend to be successful for that exact reason, connecting your students with employers and giving them exposure to different career paths.
Broad career fairs benefit most students, but don’t underestimate the power of niche options like a safety science or ethical tech career fair. A mix of broad and narrow fairs can help most students find what they’re looking for.
4. Concerts
Music connects us all, and bringing a popular act to campus can bring out large numbers of your students. The key is finding an act that hits the balance between being affordable and matching your students’ current interests. When it’s needed, consider payment and ticketing early in the planning process to help account for the cost.
Unlike many events on this list, concerts can also be late-night events, allowing more students to attend without them conflicting with their daily class schedule.
5. Technology Events
Thanks to the rise of AI, technology-related events have quickly become some of the most engaging events on college campuses. Anything from tech workshops or hackathons to presentations on how AI will affect our world can get the attention of your students. The more relevant you can make it to their current situation, the more likely they’ll be to attend.
6. Homecoming
Put all events in your annual Homecoming weekend experience together, and you’d probably have the most engaging event on this list. But it’s also crucial to treat them as individual events. For example, alumni tailgates and reunion sporting competitions drive very different (but equally beneficial) types of engagement compared to student activities.
7. Cultural or Campus-Wide Celebrations
From celebrating a professor to hosting a Founder’s Day that honors your college’s founding, all schools tend to have something to celebrate. Cultural events also ranked highly in our research. As a whole, campus-wide celebrations help your students, faculty, and staff feel like a true community.
8. Athletics
Athletic events as a whole can drive varying attendance depending on your school. But special events like the annual game against a key rival or playoff games turn into the most engaging events on campus. They also offer the opportunity to plan broader events around them, from tailgates to spirit days.
9. Course Registration Help Days
An in-person help desk for class registrations may not be an obvious choice for the most engaging events on college campuses. That it appears so prominently in our research shows how much just being there for your students when they need functional help matters. Your students will always need some help—why not make an event out of it?
10. Theater and Performing Arts
Performing arts are among the most popular extracurriculars in college aside from sports, so it’s not a surprise that these performances are among the most engaging events on college campuses. The friends, families, and peers of your student performers will always come out to support them.
11. Volunteering and Service Events
Gen Z loves volunteering. But they prefer causes close to their personal interests and values more than any generation before them. Volunteer days and other types of service events can be successful when you tap into those values, allowing students to join together for a common cause that’s close to their heart.
12. Holiday Closure Communications
An undeniably surprising result of our research comes with some background framing. If you turn holiday closure communications into an event, you can help students celebrate the end of the semester and the upcoming holiday. Just as importantly, it can also serve as an opportunity for students who are not going home over break to understand the amenities available to them over break and build community with each other.
13. Admissions Events
Open houses are predictably common among the most engaging campus events. But as students get closer to committing, admitted student days also become important for helping your incoming class connect with current students and create a welcoming community for all.
14. Family Weekend Events
Add ‘festivals’ and other types of family-related events to the research, and this event type would undeniably rank higher. But even events just labeled ‘family weekend’ in the title received plenty of engagement, suggesting the potential power of broadening your events to a larger community of parents and siblings.
Honorable Mentions
These event types didn’t quite make it into the top 14. But they are unique enough to point out for student event coordinators and marketing professionals looking to think outside the box:
- Plant sales. This is a nice opportunity for the community to engage with each other rather than just attending a school-organized event.
- Clothing swaps. This is similar to plant sales but with a twist of helping each other out while making friends and updating your wardrobe.
- Painting nights. Offering free paint classes seems popular, especially when an expert (like a professor) can provide an hour-long lesson.
- Paid research study. A unique twist on the academic tilt of campus events, this is an opportunity for research students and professors to get community input.
These event types show one thing above all: the most engaging events on college campuses do not have to fall into any unique or broad category. Instead, they can come in all shapes and sizes, providing opportunities for marketing professionals to leverage them for student and community satisfaction and more.
Takeaways for Campus Marketing Teams
In today’s higher education environment, student and community engagement is a constant effort. A few key traditional events throughout the year, run like they always have been, may no longer be enough. Instead, you need a comprehensive strategy that takes engaging campus event ideas from inception to execution.
The above ideas can help you get started on your content and event calendar. From there, it’s about the planning process and ensuring strong communication across all your key events. A digital events calendar, especially one that can handle the nuances of paid and free events, registration processes, and more, will be crucial.
That’s where Concept3D comes in. Our events calendar is designed for higher education and can handle anything from painting classes to homecoming and other massive events on campus. Ready to learn more? Contact us to get a free demo today.