Minutes: Publicity Committee

08.24.2016

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Publicity Committee Minutes

August 24, 2016 at 9:0000—10:00 a.m. in Newton 1109

Olivia Edenfield introduced Shane Clark, Assistant Director of Advisement and Programming in First-Year Experience.  He talked about the following:

 

1. Soar 1000, a pre-orientation survey sent to incoming freshmen that the office of FYE uses to inquire about the incoming students’ majors.
2. GSU 2121, a course in which students explore careers and learn job-search skills, such as resume writing. There will be a special section for second-semester first-year students who are undeclared.
3. Movie and a major workshops, in which clips from relevant movies are shown and an expert in the major speaks to students.
4. The possibility of a Shark Tank-like experience at which representatives from a variety of majors could pitch their majors before students went to break-out sections to learn more about particular majors.

Beth Butterfield the suggested that we might schedule meetings with career services and advisors, in order to introduce ourselves and explain what our majors are all about, and what sorts of career paths go together well with our majors.

Olivia described her idea for creating an upper-level internship course within the department.  The Committee voted to support her in further developing this idea and for Bill to join her in this.

Olivia also suggested that the committee invite Christy Curley to join the committee, which was agreed upon by the committee.

Mary Villeponteaux reported on the findings of the Marketing class that did projects on our majors in the spring of 2016.  She summarized their findings in the following categories:

1. When they surveyed students about why they were not majoring in English, the most common response was that students did not think they could get a job with this major.
2. There is a lack of awareness of our departmental scholarships
3. They strongly recommended that we increase our presence on social media. We should do more with Facebook and reach out to students more on platforms such as Twitter.  These are also ways to connect with alumni.  It was also suggested that we could strengthen our ties with alumni by creating a way to register through our Facebook page.
4. One marketing student suggested that by funding a Linked-In account, it would be possible to search the database for people who list our department in the Linked-In accounts and that there are currently approximately 700 such people, whom we could contact as part of our efforts to strengthen our connections with alumni.

There was widespread support for the idea of the department creating one or more promotional videos for our majors, with several members suggesting that this be done by a professional company.  There was support for seeking funding from outside the department to pay for such videos, for example from the Dean’s office.  There was some discussion about video footage shot by the Dean’s office last spring, particularly of Philosophy classes, though inquiries about such footage have so far been answered unsatisfactorily.

Brad Edwards distributed sample-sign-up sheets we might use in our classes to identify students interested in our majors and minors, an idea he credited to former colleague Hemchand Gossai, which sparked discussion about Hemchand’s success in recruiting and how he was successful in establishing personal connections with students through individual meetings.  Dustin mentioned that he does this through folio, which works well in larger classes.  There was some discussion about the best time to distribute such sheets among our classes, though everyone seemed to agree that it should be done before students register for spring and summer courses.

At 10:00, Brad Edwards moved to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Dustin Anderson, and approved by the committee.

 

Last updated: 9/8/2016