UND Community Quilt Project Will Stitch Campus Together

(UND President Andrew Armacost, center, right. Photo by Shawna Schill/UND Today)

(By Walter Criswell. UND Today) – What better way to embrace the frigid North Dakota winter than with quilts and crafts?

On Dec. 1, departments from across the University braved the cold, post-Thanksgiving weather to join the launch event for the UND Community Quilt Project, a campuswide effort to create a California king–sized quilt celebrating UND’s Year of Community.

From now until May, departments across campus will collaborate to design 144 squares telling the story of UND. The squares will eventually be quilted by the North Star Quilting Guild, based in East Grand Forks.

During his launch event speech, UND President Andrew Armacost traced the project back to his Wake Up to UND address last September, where “community” was introduced as UND’s Word of the Year. At the Wake Up to UND event, Armacost used the image of a quilt to visualize UND’s tightly knit community — a metaphor that inspired Honors Program director Mary Kirby and assistant professor of Music Whitney Mayo to approach him with this collaborative proposition.