Allegheny Student Government

Unusual Combinations
Post by Francheska Vargas

What do you think? Question of the Day…

-How do you think we can market “Unusual Combinations” in a more affective way? ( Think back when you were a prospective student)

Recap:

First off, I want to thank those whom have participated in this discussion; tomorrow I am going to be giving a presentation on the thoughts and reactions expressed on this topic of the blog.

Yesterday morning we had Jillian Kenzie come and speak to us about our NSSE ( National Survey of Student Engagement) results; Brett posted about this on the general page. From the NSSE we observed that as an institution we performed above average for the most part against other liberal arts schools in our Standard Comparison Group (Albion College, Denison College, Gettysburg, Hamilton, Hope, Kenyon, St. Olaf, Wheaton, etc.) That is great but then we started thinking here we are performing above other schools yet we do not have that reputation or application rate which means we really need to market ourselves more effectively. There was a consensus made that Allegheny College is better than it is perceived to be. So we came back to are charge: how can we use the “Unusual Combination” brand to attract more student….and keep it going once they are here?

Other Themes and Conversations:

-We talked about the caution we need to take when talking about new initiatives because we don’t want to force anything to the point that it ruins another aspect of who we are as Allegheny College.

-We talked about was this theme that has come up a million and one times: the “Unusual Combinations” commitment has to go beyond the major/minor and distribution requirement.
-However, we did agree that it is a vital part; the curriculum has to reinforce our brand so what we decided to focus on today was how the departments encourage “UC”, integration and interdisciplinary learning. How these departments represented the benefit from doing this. It is very important that we show students the results because it reinforces how “Unusual Combinations” does benefit the students and how it creates a well-rounded and successful citizen of the world.

We also had a representative from Public Affairs talk about the “UC” brand. The representative talked about how our brand is out there and that its working but there is room for improvement. From her presentation a conversation of how perhaps a diverse and integrative programming model would reinforce our brand. For example, there is a Plastic Surgery Discussion and the panelist includes a doctor, a psychologist a lawyer, etc. Our school has been known to over program so instead of having five different discussions have one, all inclusive. I think this model would work for student programming as well. Perhaps if we did more collaborative and integrative programming students would have more time to join more clubs and pursue an “Unusual Combination” of club membership. We also discussed the technological question of how we are going to use technology to enhance everything we do here at Allegheny College. And in our last couple of minutes we discussed how we could reinforce and market our brand from the perspective that we are unusual because we could be ( we are not now) an almost 200 year old liberal arts college with cutting edge technology.

I know it’s a lot but let me know your thoughts. It really does make a difference!