Your YouTube entry could win you Harper scholarship

Telling Harper College about your summer plans could land you something else worth talking about: a $1,500 Harper scholarship.

The college is embracing social media and its savvy suburban users through its second YouTube-centric challenge: Upload a video of yourself to the popular home video site, telling the world what you’re doing educationally this summer. The video with the most views at the contest’s end wins.

Though scripted, creative videos are welcome, the contest also encourages the simple, grass-roots videos that typically thrive on YouTube, says Marc Westenburg, the Harper Marketing Specialist who created the campaign.

“It could be as simple as someone sitting in front of a home webcam or a cellphone video camera, or as complex as a carefully edited animation,” he says.

Submissions can come from anyone, anywhere – they need not be current Harper students – but they must address what the person is doing educationally over the summer toward a personal, professional or academic goal. That could include brushing up on a foreign language, taking classes toward a four-year degree, completing an internship or enrolling in a local theater class.

“We want to showcase real people who are taking advantage of the summer months to make their lives better or more interesting,” Westenburg says. “Social media sites that encourage user-generated content are continuing to grow in popularity and increase in number, and we want to capitalize on that trend and offer our community a chance to have fun with it.”

The original competition video and subsequent submissions can be viewed at www.youtube.com/goforwardharper. Harper’s campaign runs through June 5.

For contest information and instructions, visit http://summer.harpercollege.edu.