Everett Community College Case Study

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Pages: 5

EVCC’s Opportunity to Engage: Bouldering

At the Student Fitness Center there is a large climbing wall, shaped like a boulder, full of multicolored plastic grips that long for use. Unfortunately, the amount of people who use it daily can very often be counted on a single hand. Everett Community College provides a severely underutilized resource - the bouldering wall. Currently, in order to use the wall all one must do is sign in and be in gym clothes. Looking at the sign in sheet you will notice the same names and a lack of diversity in who uses this wall. This is a shame since it is a unique feature that isn’t offered much places outside of climbing gyms, let alone for free. Even one of the gym staff has admitted, the removable grips that are on the wall were rearranged for the first time this quarter since they themselves had started attending. The question remains, why is a unique free activity having so few people interested in using it?

Everett Community College is in a position where they have something fresh to draw in positive attention and prospective students. However, there are various reasons why EVCC would consider not implementing an awareness program for the bouldering wall. For
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This is unfortunate because part of Everett Community College’s mission statement is to invest in the community, health, and diversity. There is little diversity in terms of academic clubs vs physical clubs. Even if we were to count the Everett Community College teams as clubs of sorts, it is a different world, as you need to apply to be part of the teams and they are not open to anyone like clubs are. By creating a bouldering club, Everett Community College would be devoting its resources to the health of its students. These are students who would be interested in a sport that might be difficult to get into or students just trying to be healthier as climbing is a full body