It only took 75 years, but Northwestern Michigan College (NMC) is finally getting a proper mascot.

The college announced the news earlier this month, and will officially unveil its new avatar – a green hawk owl dubbed “Swoop” – this weekend. The mascot comes 13 years after NMC adopted the hawk owl nickname, and 12 years after the Swoop character was first rendered as a two-dimensional logo.

Swoop will make his debut appearance at NMC’s 75th anniversary student and community block party, scheduled for this Saturday, April 25, at the college’s Front Street Campus. The event runs 3-7pm and will include carnival rides, a bounce house, a dunk tank, food trucks, live music, and more. NMC President Nick Nissley will formally introduce Swoop at 3:30pm, and other mascots from NMC’s partner universities – including Louie the Laker from Grand Valley State University, Brutus the Bulldog from Ferris State University, and Pounce the Panther from Davenport University – will be on hand for the festivities. Monty, the mascot of the Traverse City Pit Spitters, will also be present.

According to Zach Whitaker, NMC’s director of alumni relations, the journey to get to this point started all the way back in 2013.

“It was a student-driven thing; they really wanted a mascot,” Whitaker tells The Ticker of the 2013 process that officially made NMC the hawk owls. The local high schools all had their respective nicknames – the Trojans for Traverse City Central, the Titans for West Senior High, the Gladiators for St. Francis – but NMC had no equivalent. “There were a few different mascot ideas that we could choose from, and people voted for the hawk owl,” Whitaker adds.

Since then, the hawk owl has become a central part of the NMC identity. In 2014, the college debuted a hawk owl logo, naming the bird “Swoop.” The student cafeteria on campus was dubbed “the Hawk Owl Café,” and every NMC graduate now receives a “Hawk Owl Alumni” t-shirt when they finish school. With the college’s 75th anniversary at hand – and with a broader NMC brand refresh taking root last fall – the college’s alumni relations and PR/marketing teams began working together to take the concept to the next level.

“It was really just the timing of everything hitting at once,” Whitaker says of the decision to give NMC a proper mascot. “Since we first saw the two-dimensional logo of Swoop back in 2014, the college has grown a lot. With the 75th anniversary coming up, and the brand refresh – and with our new strategic plan calling for an emphasis on building a vibrant campus – it just seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring the character to life and have Swoop be physically present at our events going forward.”

While NMC’s lack of sports teams removes the most obvious reason for a college to have a live mascot, Whitaker feels there are plenty of other places where Swoop can make a positive impact.

“The goal is really to enhance the brand of the college,” Whitaker says, noting that Swoop will be present for other 75th anniversary celebrations, as well as future commencements, fall welcome weeks, college and career fairs, alumni gatherings, community outreach events, and more. This summer, Swoop will even throw out the first pitch at a Pit Spitters game.

“He’s just going to be a representative of the college, and we’re hoping he can help bring all of our stakeholders together – from our students to our alumni to our community – in a new and fun way,” Whittaker says. “He’ll be around to cheer on students and our lifelong learners at different points in time, and to celebrate all their accomplishments with NMC.”

Though historically much more common at four-year universities, mascots have grown more typical at community colleges in recent years. Earlier this year, Michigan’s own Grand Rapids Community College (GRCC) unveiled its first mascot: an otter called “the River Raider.” Writing about the process on GRCC’s website, Communication Systems Specialist Ryan Nausieda talked about the value of a mascot for creating a sense of belonging on campus.

“Most people don’t look back and say, ‘My college was the institution whose brand standards included a hawk,’” Nausieda wrote. “They say, ‘We were the Hawks,’ or the Panthers, or the Owls. That word ‘we’ does a lot of work. It turns a logo into shorthand for late nights, nervous first days, and the people who got them through… Research on community colleges backs up what we already see: relationships and a sense of ‘I belong here’ are some of the strongest reasons students keep going. The more a place acts like a real ‘we,’ the better the chances students will keep choosing us.”

Whitaker is confident Swoop will generate precisely that sense of pride and belonging at NMC. His evidence? The number of students and alumni calling him and asking if they can don the Swoop costume for an event or two.

“I’ve had a lot of folks reaching out and wanting to be a part of this,” Whitaker says. “They’re hearing the chatter about it, they’re seeing the teasers, and they’re connecting with us about, hopefully, getting to be a performer.”