The spring WAC began on April 1 with a group walk around Brighton’s Chandler Pond. Photograph: Lee Pellegrini

Colleen Simonelli is an energetic individual under normal circumstances. She runs, skis, is a clinical associate professor in the Connell School of Nursing, and is an obstetrics nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). But from April through May, and then October through November, her activity level spikes.

Simonelli is one of more than 1,100 Boston College employees—roughly 30 percent of the benefits-eligible total—who participate in Walk Across Campus (WAC), a biannual program in which individuals track their number of steps taken daily using Fitbit digital pedometers. Most days, she will log 20,000–30,000 steps, the equivalent of 10–15 miles.

The WAC program, which began in 2012, is part of Healthy You, a collaboration between the University and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, its medical insurance provider, to promote employee well-being through, among other efforts, biometric screenings and consultations with health coaches. The University provides the Fitbit, either a wristwatch-style design or one that clips to a pocket. Individuals form teams, generally officemates, and accumulate steps in pursuit of bragging rights and prizes—e.g., gift certificates at the University bookstore and athletics headbands. The spring 2016 WAC competition drew more than 80 teams. Some teams select names that signal an affiliation—Sole Sisters and Brothers (AHANA student programs), I Think I CAN (psychology department), or Check Us Out (O’Neill Library)—but most reflect the whimsy of participants: for instance, the Holy Walkamolies, Walking Bad.

More than 70 faculty and staff from the Connell School generally take part, enough to make up four teams. As Simonelli says, nurses are “in the business of . . . encouraging healthy lifestyles.” Individuals join teams that accord with their exercise ambitions: CSON Just Doin’ It (more than 18,000 daily steps); CSON Just Competitive (over 15,000); and Fun and Competitive and Fun and Health, both of which aim for 10,000.

Averaging 18,000 steps (eight to nine miles) or more a day for two months requires commitment. Many WAC participants are on the streets or in the gym for an hour or more before and after work. Simonelli and a number of her CSON colleagues keep step machines in their offices. Visit her and you may find her standing in front of her computer, reading emails while her feet jog up and down. In an hour she can tack on 2,000–3,000 steps.

Phillip Temples, systems administrator in the computer science department and captain of The Comeback Kids, has occasionally paced the hallway of his condominium building in the evening to reach his daily goal. Megan Barry, assistant director of undergraduate programs in the biology department and leader of Frameshifters (which refers to a type of genetic mutation), says the need to walk her dog has been helpful.

Participants climb the stairs to their campus offices (Simonelli also takes the stairs to her clinical work on the 14th floor of MGH in Boston). They join charity walks. They’ll park at a distance from their intended destination. And they’ll hand-deliver documents on campus rather than use interoffice mail.

Other WAC participants choose to circle the concourses of Conte Forum (300 steps per circuit) and Alumni Stadium (500). On a raw day in early April, pods of walkers strode briskly in both directions around Conte, occasionally trading barbs with other groups but mostly “discussing work and solving the world’s problems,” in the words of one walker.

Associate professor of economics Harold Petersen, who retired this spring after 56 years at Boston College, was a member of Infinite Loop, a team based in the economics department (feedback loops—e.g., success feeds success—are common in economics parlance). On average, Petersen recalls, he covered eight to nine miles a day, three of them by commuting on foot from his Brookline home. He was never much of a competitive athlete, Petersen says, but found that the Fitbit creates a “contest with myself.” In mid-May, he reported that his goal was to finish in the top 30 overall for the spring (he ended up 28th), adding with a smile, “if they had an age category”—he was 82 at the time—”I think I’d be first.” Asked what an economist would make of WAC, Petersen replied that economists maintain “we get satisfaction from goods purchased through the marketplace, for which we need money. To spend time on something that doesn’t bring money or its equivalence in goods would be irrational.” He concluded: “So much for the economist’s model.”

From the University’s perspective, says Jack Burke (of the Fitbit Misfits), the economic value of the program is “extremely difficult to pin down.” Benefits director in the human resources division, Burke believes the program “establishes in people’s minds the importance of exercise; and that has to have some positive effect over time.”

Bruce Dixon, an energy management specialist in the Office of Facilities Management (Black and Gold, a nod to the Bruins), says the program improved his sleep and helped him lose weight. He added that “It got me outside more. . . . I was paying attention to architecture and plants that I’d never seen before.”

Academic technologist at the Center for Teaching Excellence Scott Kinder and members of the CTExcel team had a lunchtime loop that took them from their offices in the O’Neill Library through neighborhood streets and into the Houghton Garden, a public woodland. Kinder is not a fan of circling Conte or the Reservoir; “I need a destination,” he says. On a day in mid-May as he wound through the network of paths, rhododendrons were beginning to bloom, the buds swelled on clumps of iris at the edge of a vernal pool, and a cardinal trilled. Kinder described the route as “more meditation than exercise.” By the time he returned to his office, he had logged 5,500 steps.

The spring Walk Across Campus concluded on June 3. On average, participants logged 512,995 steps per person for the two months. That’s 8,549 per day, slightly less than five miles—or 56,429,421 steps in total, enough to carry someone around the Earth more than 10 times, or to the moon and beyond.

Read more by Thomas Cooper