MEN AT WORK
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Aaron Bailey and Rick Hull of Cedar City work
on the renovation of the Braithwaite Liberal Arts
Center. Chad Carter of Carter Enterprises, Inc.,
said the project is 25 percent finished. Jim Tullis,
project supervisor said work will be completed sometime
in August.
KEN HANSEN / UNIVERSITY JOURNAL
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University pays $42,500
to market SUU’s brand
By JACKIE ANDRUS
UNIVERSITY JOURNAL
Getting SUU’s name out into the world beyond southern
Utah is beginning to be a major marketing venture for
the university.
Kacy Backlund said she wouldn’t have heard of SUU
if her father hadn’t been a former student because
Backlund isn’t from southern Utah. In fact, Backlund,
a senior physical education major, is from Reno, Nev.,
a city where many of her friends have never heard of the
school she has been attending for the past four years,
she said.
Money from increased tuition has gone to improve SUU’s
marketing strategies both in and out of the state, a measure
that will ultimately benefit current students as more
programs could be offered at the school, said Dean O’Driscoll,
assistant to the president for university relations.
An allotment of $42,500 that comes from the increased
tuition is being used to market the university in an effort
to entice more students from the Wasatch Front as well
as Arizona and Nevada, O’Driscoll said.
“The budget up until now has pretty much been non-existent,”
O’Driscoll said. “You can’t market for
free; so we’ve placed ads where we can afford to,
where we can get the best bank for our
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buck.”
In addition, marketing is also an approach to provide students
with a better quality education, which is the university’s
ultimate responsibility, said Matt Glazier, SUUSA president.
“If we don’t grow, or if we slump in our growth,
it hurts the students because programs aren’t offered,”
Glazier said. “Like it or not the university is a
business and newer funds help us to get bigger and more
things.”
More students who attend the university mean more money
to pour into baccalaureate programs, a strategy which meets
part of the goal of the tuition increase, Glazier said.
“We want to continually get better in what we can
give to students,” Glazier said.
In addition, the school’s name becomes known by marketing
the university to potential scholarship donors who may not
have heard about the school otherwise, O’Driscoll
said.
“You have to be a known entity to get scholarships,”
O’Driscoll said. “If a donor hasn’t heard
about you then they’re not going to give you money.
We want to get our name out into the public because donors
like to give money to successful programs and we are one.
It’s just that no one knows about us.”
Though marketing coverage had been primarily limited to
southern Utah, part of the money has already gone to placing
ads in northern Utah, Arizona, and Nevada publications.
O’Driscoll said he has, in fact, gone outside of Utah
early in the marketing strategy to entice out-of-state students
to attend a school that is a “higher education bargain.”
“In the Phoenix metro area, for example, we’ve
placed ads telling students we have more summer classes
and more advisors,” O’Driscoll said. “We’re
trying to sell SUU as improving itself.”
However, while the residency requirements present a real
challenge, SUU is not out of line with a lot of other out-of-state
options and actually compares favorable with other schools,
even within a student’s home state, O’Driscoll
said.
“Out of state we really push SUU because it’s
good quality,” O’Driscoll said.
Radio and billboard ads have been placed in the Salt Lake
City area, as well as ads placed on the sides of metro buses
which will hopefully reach potential students from Provo
to the Ogden area in a cost efficient way, O’Driscoll
said.
“We don’t have much of an image on the Wasatch
Front,” O’Driscoll said. “It’s not
that we have a bad image, it’s just that we don’t
have one. So, these marketing efforts make us visible. We
want students when they’re looking around for a college
to at least think of SUU so we can be part of that decision.
Right now we’re not part of that decision. We’re
not even a consideration.”
SUU has increased its exposure in St. George because students
there are within the university’s own region.
“We want to do our best to get all the students we
can from that area by being a regular presence in St. George,”
O’Driscoll said.’
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