My Time, the Tradition Project was developed by the Student Alumni Association last year to create a time capsule of the past and present of Seton Hall University.
The project focuses on the history of Seton Hall as told by current students, faculty, alumni and former faculty and staff.
The project was originally only supposed to last for one year, but it will continue to build and develop for the next three to five years.
"Essentially, the tradition project is like an oral history project where the student alumni association is recording the history at Seton Hall by reaching out to students, alumni, parents of students and of alumni, and previous faculty and staff to ask them to share their Seton Hall story," Daniel Nugent, director of Student and Regional Programs said.
President of the Student Alumni Association, Richard Allen, explained that the SAA plans to open up the project to all those attending University Day on Oct.3.
The students have the opportunity to contribute their own experiences by participating in video interviews or by simply visiting the mini museum.
"We are doing a tent outside on the Green with information about the Student Alumni Association and about the project," Allen said. "Also, we're having a museum display with blown up Seton Hall pictures and artifacts from the past along with doing video interviews for the My Time Project."
"We started the traditions intending for it to only be a one year project. But it is just way too big to try to do in a year," Nugent said. "We don't know where it's going to go but we keep different departments on campus wanting to know what the students think about Seton Hall now. The university archives will be keeping a permanent record of this."
The SAA requests students to get more involved within the project and give their insight and outlook of Seton Hall.
"One thing we want current students to know is that we want them to go onto the website and fill out the questionnaire that we will use for a variety of different things," Nugent said. "Also the SAA will be at events all year long on campus with our blue traditions projects tent conducting video interviews of the students which we started on blue day."
The Student Alumni Association is gathering information from questionnaires on their website that students are asked to fill out, and video interviews were and will be conducted with current students and alumni.
In June 2009, Nugent and a few students went on road trips to Chicago, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
"Seton Hall has about 80,000 alumni worldwide and we don't always see all of those people," Nugent said. "Groups of students from the Student Alumni Association have started this summer going on road trips to stop in different areas of where we meet with alumni and conduct video interviews with them about their time at Seton Hall."
Throughout the academic year, they plan to continue to visit alumni at their homes and conduct interviews that will be added to their archive.
"During this academic year there are going to be more trips like that, but they'll be going place to place meeting with alumni at their homes and at their work to get video interviews," Nugent said.
In the future, the SAA plans to share the history and experiences they encountered while developing the My Time Project.
A new interactive website will be created where the members of the Seton Hall community will be able to view the history of the university.
"We would also like to print a book that is to be distributed to the incoming freshmen so that they can learn about Seton Hall's history and traditions," Nugent said. " Lastly, we'd like to create a traveling museum display that we can take around to the alumni chapters around the country that hold events and we want to create something to travel with to all of those cities."
The video interviews posted by the SAA can be viewed at www.youtube.com/setonhallsaa.
The students can get involved by either filling out the survey online at www.shu.edu/go/mytime or conducting a video interview.
Jacqueline DeBenedetto can be reached at jacqueline.debenedetto@student.shu.edu.
