The Union University Wellness Center now offers new wellness challenges to students who want to take advantage of its incentive program.
The challenges have been set to replace the center’s old punch-card system. In the past, students could come in to the wellness center and request a punch card after doing an activity for more than 20 minutes. After 20 punches, they could later use the punch card to redeem for prizes such as coupons and gift cards to various places, such as Smoothie King, Moe’s or Tulum.
Jonny Wilson, Director for Campus Recreation, says that, like other gym incentive programs, the goal was just to get people into the gym. However, Wilson saw flaws in this mindset.
“Instead of continuing with something that just gets people in the door, I wanted something that got people more involved,” Wilson said. “One thing that the punch cards did not do for us, is that they didn’t give us really any kind of metric. It told us if someone came in and punched their card, but you could come in and stretch for 20 minutes and call it your activity and leave.”
Wilson says that the punch cards didn’t give the wellness center qualitative information about the students.
“It doesn’t tell anything about whether that person is improving, if their fitness levels are increasing, if their strength is going up, their flexibility, their metabolic conditioning,” Wilson said. “It doesn’t tell us anything about whether or not we’re accomplishing our mission in campus rec. The mission of campus rec is to improve health and fitness on campus by giving people physical activities that they enjoy.”
A different challenge will be offered each month, and students have the opportunity to compete in the challenge every day. Prizes will be given out at the end of each month, depending on the challenge. Metabolic conditioning will be tested each week of October. Smaller prizes will be given out every week of October, but students who complete all of the challenges will have a bigger prize opportunity at the end of that month.
The value of the prizes will also be greater than the prizes offered in the punch-card system. This month, the wellness center is giving out campus rec t-shirts to anyone in the top three of the competition. September’s prize will be stainless steel insulated water bottles with the campus rec logo. Wilson hopes that the greater prize values will reflect the greater commitment and involvement that the wellness center is seeking to encourage and that the new program will attract more students.
“We want buy-in from students… participation and some kind of commitment to the process, a way to track that commitment or process, and a way to determine if that process has led to improvement,” Wilson said.
Carter Sprouse, sophomore marketing and digital media communications major, and David Parks, sophomore computer science and math major, visit the wellness center six days a week and typically spend one to two hours there. Sprouse and Parks see benefits to both incentive programs, but they are looking forward to taking advantage of the new challenges.
“I think the punch-card system did a better job of incentivizing daily use, but the new system with the challenges incentivizes more overall use,” Sprouse said.
Parks added, “I think it will do a better job in my opinion, as long as they keep things in that won’t only appeal to the guys who are lifting the heaviest weights. I like the idea better than punch cards. I do miss the punch cards, but I think it’s a great idea.”
Photo courtesy of Kristi McMurry Woody
