In an effort to increase the university's visibility, reputation:

NU hires firm as part of campaign

By Brian Mullally
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

The image of Norwich University as an institute of higher learning which emphasizes traditional values of courage, honesty, temperance and wisdom is well known to its students. However, even in Montpelier there are those who have never heard of the nation's oldest military college.

The new Norwich University Marketing Campaign will help the national and local perception of Norwich as one of the top universities along with schools such as U.C.L.A, Michigan, and Harvard.

The new Norwich University Marketing Campaign, which is under the direction of Karen McGrath, dean of enrollment management, and Michael J. McKean, commandant of cadets and vice president of student affairs, have hired a consulting firm to help with the program.

The firm Stamats is to research what Norwich's reputation is "based on our academic credentials, history, and leadership credentials," on a national basis, said McKean.

Stamats is an organization that is widely recognized in its field.

"We've gone and called different universities and have gotten positive feedback about their prior work for these schools," McKean said.

The task of the campaign is to define "the perception of Norwich in the minds of prospective students, prospective families, the nation at large, and alumni," McGrath explained.

"We want to be able to enhance our enrollment, our academic reputation, and our position in the market," said McGrath. But in order to achieve these goals the university must look internally regarding where it stands. "In order to move forward you do have to know exactly where you're at," said McGrath.

Stamats' job is to discover how Norwich is perceived in the marketplace, by conducting surveys and interviewing different high schools throughout the nation, according to McGrath.

Already the campaign has resulted in one of the largest freshman classes in a decade at Norwich.

"It says that we are being recognized better; it says that people want to come here; and it's going to allow us to grow," McKean said.

After Stamats has conducted the research, which will be sometime in January 2003, they will then come up with an internal report based on how to help "heighten the name of Norwich in the minds of people who don't know Norwich," McGrath said.

That report will consist of the school's advertising methods based on " how we communicate with the outside world," McGrath explained.

Stamats will then develop a marketing plan, which will help make our, "website more dynamic, how to make our business cards more marketable, and how to advertise through television and radio," McGrath said.

This research campaign will help heighten the reputation and become one of the most widely recognized schools in the nation, she said.

"If you fulfill your promises, it will help with enrollment, reputation, our development, and it will make us a stronger school," McGrath said.

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