By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News

To help connect incoming first-year students at Utah State University Eastern to the Castle Country Community and its many resources, the University hosted its annual Town Ties event on Friday, Aug. 22, allowing students and their families to see what their new home has to offer.

Director of Campus and Community Engagement Brad Watson joined the KOAL newsroom to discuss the origin of the event and how it aims to impact students and businesses alike.

“We want the students to know what businesses are in our community, and we want the businesses to know about the students that are here, because this helps both. If the students know what businesses specifically are here, they know where they can go to buy what it is that they want,” said Watson. “And if the businesses are aware of the students that are here, they know of people they can advertise to. They can know of employees they could possibly hire. So just like the name says, Town Ties, this is tying businesses in the community to students and students to businesses.”

To avoid the everyday drab decor of a typical resource fair, Town Ties opts for a more inviting carnival theme. “It’s fun because as students go by some of these tables in a room that we have set up, they’re doing carnival games, and so the businesses are able to showcase some of the things that they have,” explained Watson. “For example, Scattered Dice was one of the businesses that was with us this past Monday, and they played a dice game with students and were giving out 20-sided dice. That’s perfect for Scattered Dice as a marketing opportunity to students.”

In addition to learning about the many businesses from across the area, students are treated to a free meal. “We have a sponsor each year who is willing to pay for the event and pay for the meal for the students. And so that’s where it really starts off, is if you take care of that cost, then you can make the rest of it happen. And fantastic work from our community on this.”

Speaking on the origins of the event, Watson shared,” We had the same sponsor I mentioned earlier who came to us and said, ‘Hey, I think it would be a really good idea if businesses in our community served a meal to students. If I pay for the meal, will you figure something out?’ And so that’s really where it started: we had the money to provide meals for the students. We didn’t know when it would be. We didn’t know what it would look like.”

He continued,” And so three years ago, we went to the Carbon County Chamber of Commerce and said, ‘Hey, we have this sponsor who’s willing to pay for it. So the money hurdle is taken care of. Would you be willing to form a committee with us that would perhaps figure out something for this?’ And some fantastic members of the Chamber of Commerce said, ‘Yeah, we’ll form a committee and we’ll figure something out.’ So there was no name. There was nothing … And the USU Eastern Alumni Committee was all a part of this and all had those booths around the room. So it was that committee that really started it who was open to an idea.”

Closing out our conversation, Watson stated,” I just want to say how grateful we are for community members who are willing to partner with us in these kinds of things. We want to do things differently that are going to help both the college and the community … So a big thank you to all of the people who were involved in Town Ties.”