QUEST provides a lot of opportunities for student involvement. The program’s various clubs give students the chance to work with QUESTees across cohorts, get to know staff and faculty members outside of the classroom, and make great connections with alumni. The clubs provide great diversity in terms of what they offer, so whether you like to create functional web applications, write and publish stories, or even plan fun events and activities for students, there is a club for you. Currently QUEST has seven extracurricular clubs comprising of QUESTPress, QUEST Dev, QUEST Development Series, QUEST Corporate, QUEST Social, QUEST Recruiting, and the newest addition, QUEST Creative.
QUEST Creative was formerly called QUEST Marketing. QUEST Marketing’s primary job was to design and create posters and fliers for the Quality Guild and QUEST student organizations. Despite its success, the club wished to expand its scope in order to be more inclusive to other forms of art other than graphic design. QUEST Marketing was known for creating beautiful, artistic posters that grabbed attention and instilled awe, so the team members kept this in mind as they went about rebranding the club. The team members wanted the club to be known for its creativity, and in order to emphasize this trait, they changed the club’s name to QUEST Creative and made its ultimate goal to “expand and encourage creativity and the desire to create in all shapes and forms” (Ivy Xia, Q25).
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Each month, QUEST Creative follows a specific theme that gives them inspiration for what to teach their members during general body meetings and how to create events that cater to all QUEST members. This month’s theme is arts and crafts, and in honor of that, QUEST Creative’s first event was a paint night that took place on March 1st. Matthew Masison from Cohort 27, one of the students who led paint night, noted that the event was very successful. All spots were reserved well before the week of the event, and it was QUEST Creative’s first time bringing the QUEST community together on a large scale. Matthew saw that many of the attendees were from older cohorts (25, 26), and told me that QUEST Creative will market more to the newer cohorts (29, 30) as well. Next month’s theme will be on poster design, as QUEST students are preparing for their poster presentations in their 190H class.
QUEST Creative is off to a great start, and after speaking with Ivy Xia from Cohort 25, I learned a bit about what kind of measures the club is taking to ensure that their success is prolonged. Ivy mentioned that she and the team are working on ways to give their goal more structure in order to benefit the club’s members and the QUEST community as a whole. She also told me about how the club is beginning to prepare for its spring recruiting launch and that she hopes the large-scale events QUEST Creative will hold in the future will raise awareness of the club and attract prospective members.
As QUEST Marketing became QUEST Creative, its objective went from developing aesthetic projects for student organizations and designing merchandise for corporate partners to engaging the entire QUEST community to think creatively and bond over beauty. Now their general body meetings not only comprise of gaining skills in functional programs such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Adobe XD, but also learning about other forms of creation and preparing for community-wide events. If interested in attending these meetings, you’re in luck. QUEST Creative is looking for members who share the team’s passion for learning new skills and creating works of art in many different mediums. Their application can be found at ter.ps/joinqc, and if you have any questions, email qcreativeumd@gmail.com.