General Suggestions for Developing a Marketing Piece for Your Campus (instructors, faculty, and/or administrators)

Many people will be interested in NSSE findings because writing is important to them for one or a number of reasons. You can use these NSSE findings as an opportunity to connect with those on your campus who care and link your program’s work with them. Here are a few tips that might help:

• Ground your work in your local context.  Choose one or two aspects of NSSE findings that you think especially important or useful, and connect your work to them. You’ll have the most impact working locally – with people on your campus, with your campus newspaper, or (in some cases) with local media.

• Connect with your campus public relations or marketing director. Most campuses have personnel responsible for making contacts with external (off-campus) media. NSSE findings are a great opportunity to start a conversation about how your program enacts some of the beneficial teaching practices described in the findings.

• Contact the op-ed editor of your campus and/or local newspaper about doing an op-ed piece. Unless you live in a major media market, op-ed editors are often looking for good op-ed pieces. You can find tips on writing op-eds on the WPA Network for Media Action site: wpacouncil.org/nma.

• Use NSSE findings to develop connections to people across campus who might also be interested. For instance, such as a director of faculty development. When you share the results, connect with their interest. For example, you might follow a statement about the connections between writing and increased engagement with a query about meeting with the faculty development director to brainstorm opportunities to foster this engagement across campus.

Whatever you do, Lead your discussion or written statement with a concise, clear, and positive statement about the findings and connect your local work to it in equally clear, concise, and positive ways.

More writing tips are available from the Council of Writing Program Administrators Network for Media Action: wpacouncil.org/nma and http://wpacouncil.org/communication-strategies