My Football Ticket program wins award

When the University announced it would be switching to a paperless football ticket system for students no one thought it would catch on like it did.

With nearly 16,000 hits every football weekend, the My Football Tickets system was recently awarded the 2008 Collaboration and Partnership Award from the National Association of College Auxiliary Services.

Gina Johnson, associate vice president for Auxiliary Services at the University, said the Capstone received it for not only having the revolutionary program, but also for how many people were involved in the process.

“What it’s all about is partnership on campus and working together with other departments, and this award recognizes that a whole bunch of people had to work together to make [the] My Football Tickets [program] a reality,” Johnson said.

SGA Vice President for Student Affairs Louise Crow said while the honor was given to UA’s Auxiliary Services, she felt everyone who worked on it could be proud.

“The award really went to Auxiliary Services, but it just shows that students, SGA and administrators can all work together and take a vision, see a need for something, take the expertise of our administration and continually working together towards a common good,” Crow said.

Johnson said it took 100 percent from everyone to get this program going in time for the season.

“It was great — this program came about pretty quickly so it took a lot of effort on everybody’s part so we could have the process in place when students began to sign up for their football tickets,” she said.

Altogether, the My Football Ticket’s program took the combined efforts of UA department of athletics, the dean of students office, the SGA, the ACTion card Office and the Office of Information Technology.

Jeanine Brooks, director for the ACTion Card office, said it has accomplished all of its goals so well that other schools are also looking into following the University’s blueprint.

“I think it’s extremely successful, probably one of my biggest concerns was making everyone comfortable with the system. It’s been amazing to me to how well adopted its been, we average 16,000 hits each week the systems open,” she said. “I will tell you there are several other schools looking at the same programming so it is bringing up some attention within the card system industry.”

Crow said the University deserves all the credit it can get for this award.

“It’s been such a privilege to work with people in the University who generally care about students,” she said. “Student tickets don’t affect them but they made it a top priority for them, it’s been really motivating.”

Crow said they were working towards improving the system for next season.