NDSU Residence Life and Dining earn two ACHUO-I first-place marketing awards
NDSU’s Department of Residence Life won two first-place marketing awards in its first year of competing in the 2026 ACUHO-I Best in Show Marketing Awards.
NDSU Residence Life earned first place in the overall campaign category for the housing renewal campaign and first place in the brochure/booklet category for the Residence Life and Dining Experience Booklet, a dual-sided flip book that features Residence Life on one side and NDSU Dining on the other, according to Kelsey Horner, assistant director of marketing for Residence Life and Dining.
Horner shared she was surprised to learn that the team won two first-place awards in its first year of competing.
“We were competing against schools that have a lot more students than us and bigger teams,” she said. “It was especially awesome for us to get the recognition on one of our biggest campaigns, housing renewal, because of the volume of work and energy that go into making that campaign a success.”
Other schools featured among the winners include Kent State University, North Carolina University, Michigan State University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and more.
Horner and her team developed the housing renewal campaign by reaching out to first-year students who were living on campus during the 2025-26 academic year and asked them to provide quotes about why they wanted to continue living on campus.
“We did a combination of quotes in our housing renewal book that students receive when they get back from winter break, along with other posters about when roommate matching begins and when the different phases of housing renewal begin,” Horner said.
In the first week after the housing renewal campaign began, the department had over 1,000 first-year and upper-division students select their room for continuing to live on campus in residence halls for the following year.
The second winning entry, Residence Life and Dining Experience Booklet, highlights what life is like living on campus as a student, with features like top 10 favorite events in the halls, information on what is offered in different residence halls and apartments on campus, important deadlines for incoming students, dining information and dining options.
Participating in competitions like the ACUHO-I Marketing Awards is a way to showcase and recognize the hard work being done throughout the year, Horner said.
“It shows our team that the time, thought and effort that go into creating these campaigns, booklets and other materials are not only appreciated within our department but recognized at a higher level, too,” she said. “So often, we put so much work into these projects and quickly move on to the next thing. Taking the time to celebrate these accomplishments reminds our team that what we do matters, that our work makes an impact and that it’s something we should be proud of and share with others.”
ACUHO-I is an organization for campus housing and residence life professionals around the world. The organization has over 17,000 members and represents 1.2 million on-campus students, according to their website.
The marketing awards were established in 2016, and this year there were 55 universities that submitted 231 entries in 16 categories.