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Welcoming the University of Minnesota’s Class of 2030

University of MinnesotaMinneapolis, MNSeptember 2026

“Beginning of college has all these big feelings, and when they walk in this room, how big this feels will match what that experience is going to look like.”
— Emily Oswalt, Senior Director of Student Engagement, University of Minnesota

For Welcome Week 2026, Immersivegroup turned a University of Minnesota racquetball court into a three-wall immersive room. Immersiveserver Namewall put each new student’s name, hometown and photo on the walls, alongside a custom maroon-and-gold show.

The challenge

“The original idea was, how do we put students in a position where they feel like they’re running out of the tunnel with the football team, or on the ice with the hockey team?” says Emily Oswalt, Senior Director of Student Engagement at the University of Minnesota.

The university also asked for the room to be interactive. Watching a show was not enough: every new student should be able to walk in, put themselves on the wall and see the room answer.

“It was really important for the University of Minnesota to wow their students, and that’s why they brought us in to give them this experience on that first day,” says Andrew Columbus, founder and CEO of Immersivegroup.

Three walls, one canvas

Immersivegroup put one projector on each wall: the 20-foot front wall and the two 40-foot side walls. Each was warped and calibrated in Immersiveserver so the three read as a single picture wrapping the room, with the floor and ceiling left dark.

The show was built for the room in maroon and gold. Students ran out of the tunnel, stood on the football field and the hockey rink, toured campus and met Goldy Gopher, and the loop came back each time to the university’s own line: “You start by showing up. You build a legacy. You leave a Gopher.”

“We made the call, and he was here the next day, which was great for us to be able to have that in-person touch,” says Oswalt.

Immersiveserver Namewall puts the class on the wall

Immersiveserver Namewall is the interactive side of Immersiveserver, and it is how the room answered.

On the way in, each student scanned a QR code and sent in their name, their hometown and a photo from their phone. Then the room took over. Their name filled the centre wall under the word Welcome, the globe on the left wall turned and flew to their hometown, and their photo joined the class wall on the right, beside everyone who had come in before them.

University staff approved every entry before it appeared, and welcomes played one at a time, so each student had their own moment on the wall however full the room was.

Pre-show render: Immersiveserver Namewall on a model of the court, cycling test entries before load-in.

Pre-show render of the centre wall reading “Welcome Mateo Schmidt, Houston, Texas”, with the globe on the left wall and the photo wall on the right. — A welcome on the centre wall.

Pre-show render of the left wall zoomed in on a satellite map of Texas, with a pin marking a hometown. — The globe flies to the new hometown.

One show, one room

Immersiveserver Namewall runs live in the same show as everything else in the room. A student’s welcome and the run out of the tunnel share the same walls, and the room never breaks from one to the other.

The results

Students walked in expecting a racquetball court. They filmed their own welcomes, found their photos on the wall and looked for their towns on the globe.

“It kind of got emotional, because you just feel like part of something bigger,” said one new student.