VIDEO: Mount St. Joseph Univ. Becomes Minecraft Map

By Mike Perleberg (Cincinnati, Oh.) - You can get a virtual tour of Mount Saint Joseph University, built utilizing a popular computer game. “Mount St. Joseph University—A Minecraft World Adventure” shows off the Delhi campus in the form of a Minecraft map. The blocked, pixelated replication of MSJU can be seen in the video above. “Today’s high school students conduct their college search completely different from the model even 10 years ago,” said Bill Minor, VP of enrollment management at the Mount. “Gone are the days when they’d pick up a phone and schedule a tour. With the advances in technology, they can see a campus anywhere, on any device. Now with the Mount’s virtual world in Minecraft, they can literally walk the campus and even talk to an admission counselor while playing a video game.” The Minecraft map features the inside and outside of the library, the Mater Dei Chapel, the football field, and other structures throughout campus. It took MSJU associate director of marketing Trevor Griffith and his nephew, Ohio State University student Tyler Flood, seven months to assemble the map. Two million blocks were used. “We were looking for a new way to show the campus so I did some research and found other universities had created their campus in a Minecraft world for students to do a ‘fly over,’” Griffith said. “We decided to build our own world but design it in a way so prospective students could actually talk to other people—other prospective students or admission counselors—and ask questions in a relaxed environment.” If you aren’t content watching the video, “Mount St. Joseph University—A Minecraft World Adventure” is free but players must have already purchased a Minecraft license for $26.95 for their PC or Mac platform. The university says plans are also underway for gamers to download the world to play on their XBOX, PlayStation and hand held devices. More info on the project can be found at www.msj.edu. Becoming a Minecraft map has not been the only transformation for the small liberal arts Catholic school. This past June it officially became a University and underwent a name change from The College of Mount St. Joseph.