The Review

Issue date: 2/20/07 Section: Mosaic

Media Credit: Amanda Ayers [Click to enlarge]

In the past two weeks, Tuesday nights at Klondike Kate's on Main Street has transported bar-goers back to their awkward adolescent days. It's a middle school dance, but lose the chaperones, take out the beers hiding in sport jackets and include "A.C. Slater" shooters at the bar.

Often in business or marketing classes, students are assigned projects to simulate decisions they would have to make in the real world. Whether it's coming up with a business plan for a simulated sales company or investing monopoly money in a fake stock market, the ideas students come up with are useful but rarely get put into action.

When senior Stacie Colburn came up with the idea for a '90s-themed night for Kate's, she wasn't just doing it for a grade in her business writing class.

Colburn says she got the idea for '90s night when she was babysitting for a couple who graduated from the university in 1993.

"They were telling me how they loved going to '80s night when they were in school here and I couldn't believe it's been around for that long," Colburn says.

Despite her professor's initial hesitation toward her proposal, Colburn still went on to develop the idea and find out whether a significant amount of students would come to '90s night.

"I did a lot of research. I collected 150 surveys and interviewed different people. I think my paper was about 25 pages long," she says.

Before she handed out surveys, Colburn says she wanted to do a test to see if the project was worth continuing.

"I created an open group on Facebook called, 'Hell yes, I'd rock out to the '90s at Klondike Kates,' and invited a few of my friends to see how many were interested," she says.

Within three weeks, Colburn says her club had reached more than 350 members, proving to her the idea was already garnering significant interest.

When she presented the research she had done to the managers and owner of Kate's on Feb. 1, they were eager to implement the theme into their schedule immediately.

Katie Scott, one of the three managers at Kate's, says they try to do promotions on nights they think need to be improved, usually Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Continued...

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