Almost the End of the Week
In this Issue:
- Hit the Bricks photostory
- URECA (undergraduate research) recap
- When is Commencement and Family Weekend in future years?
I got my 10,000 steps in yesterday via Hit the Bricks…and my feet and legs are telling me so today :) But it is a good kind of sore, knowing you were part of something big and special, a real celebration of the Wake Forest community and our connection to each other and the desire to do good in the world.
Here’s all the news I have for you today…
Hit the Bricks photostory
Hit the Bricks was yesterday, and it was as close to perfect a day for it: the weather was maybe high 70s, it was sunny but not too hot, and the Quad was filled with colorful tents, music, food, and tons of fun.
My talented colleagues who work with news and photography put together this Hit the Bricks photostory, which I highly recommend to you (you may even see your Deac – or yourself, if you are a student reader of the Daily Deac!)
One thing the photos do not capture is just how fast some of our students were running around the Quad. I was walking for my Hit the Bricks shifts, and there were moments where a student who was running full blast passed me so close that it blew my hair around my face. There are some seriously fast Deacs out there. (Ah, to be 18-22 again…)
Thanks to the hard work of our student and staff organizers of the event, as well as the 1,000+ students, faculty, and staff who participated in walking and running laps, Hit the Bricks raised $348,720 for the Brian Piccolo Cancer Research Fund – which is something we can all be proud to support. GO DEACS!
And in case you didn’t realize, you can subscribe to our photostories so they get emailed to you every time a new one is published. Scroll to the bottom of the Hit the Bricks photostory and fill out the Subscribe to Stories box.
URECA (undergraduate research) recap
URECA Day is a signature part of Family Weekend. It is when undergraduate students showcase the research projects they have been working on with faculty.
If you did not have a chance to attend URECA Day at Family Weekend, this is a great recap of the event. The part I found especially interesting was this Instagram post where students were challenged to explain their research in 15 seconds (having done academic research myself, I can attest that it is very hard to distill complex research into a short sound bite!)
This also stuck out to me from the news story: “The undergraduate research experience through URECA often extends beyond Family Weekend. Some students continue to work with a faculty mentor, attend conferences to present research with their mentors or become co-authors on research papers.
Approximately one out of every 12 undergraduate students crossing the stage at commencement in 2026 will have had an opportunity to present at an Undergraduate Research Day during their time at Wake Forest.”
That 1-in-12 number is significant: at many prestigious universities, undergraduates do not have the opportunity to participate in research with faculty. Some research-intensive universities model is that their faculty tend only to interact with their Masters and Ph.D. students, but Wake Forest is not that way. Even students who are first-years can do research if they want to. This is amazingly special.
When is Commencement and Family Weekend in future years?
I got a great question from a family this week: How can I find the dates for my Deac’s Commencement and for the remaining Family Weekends during their time at Wake?
Commencement dates can be found at commencement.wfu.edu (scroll all the way to the bottom of the page and look on the left).
Family Weekend dates are chosen after the football schedule is released (which I believe happens in late Jan-early Feb most years), so we cannot predict those in advance.