#FIUThrowback

January 2013 - present

Somewhat piggy-backing on the success of Throwback Thursday posts on social, I decided to create a weekly opportunity for the community to look back on where FIU started as an institution and how far we've come since the 1960s. As an institution, we're growing faster than ever, and #FIUThrowback's goal was to take a breather and view FIU as university of the past, present and future.

Inspiration

At the time, the popular Instagram and Twitter hashtag #TBT was very popular. Before the #FIUThrowback hashtag was cultivated, most students' knowledge of old-FIU was limited. Most archived photos were housed in the Special Collections office in our library, and occasionally we'd post an old photo when we came across one.

Prep

When I decided to take on the project of posting weekly archived photos to social, I immediately contacted our Special Collections office.

Gina Chin Fatt was my contact there, and she invited me over to look through the photos. Our system was: place a post-it note on the photos I wanted, and Gina would scan/send them to me.

I would visit every month, but then Gina just kept sending me photos on her own, and even sending over images scanned from old yearbooks.

This is a great way of getting to know your institution's history, and oftentimes you'll be surprised to find some neat things (i.e. Psychedelic Furs played during Homecoming in 1986).