May 12, 2000

Integrating messages enhance educational excellence and student success

Initiatives associated with recruitment, retention, and marketing are all inter-related and are based on Loyola's commitment to educational excellence and student success, according to Dr. Lydia Voigt, associate provost for academic affairs. Her remarks reprinted here were part of the presentation at the preliminary meeting of the President's Integrated Marketing Advisory Committee on April 11.

According to most experts, the current recruitment season is the most competitive in the history of higher education. The competitive nature of higher education, especially private universities like Loyola, requires that we not only "attract" but "keep" academically talented students. Questions recently asked at the President's Open House strongly attest to the fact that our prospective students and their parents have become sophisticated consumers of higher education, demanding evidence on student success in terms of such indicators as persistence and graduation rates, and acceptance rates to graduate and professional schools. How we communicate our relative success as an institution (i.e., how we frame our responses including how we present supporting data or evidence) is critical to our ability to both recruit and retain students. Effective communication of our outcomes determines our relative reputation and the external perceptions of the value of a Loyola education.

The recommendation for an integrated communication and marketing plan for the university emerged as a priority in two of the 10 workgroups of the Task Force on Student Success and Retention. The need for a comprehensive, integrated communication and marketing plan also came up in several town meetings and focus groups with students as well as with faculty and staff. On the one hand, individuals have expressed the need for enhancing a sense of ourselves, including the development of campus pride along with a greater awareness and appreciation or recognition of our accomplishments as individuals and as an institution. On the other hand, individuals have expressed the need to make a more concerted and systematic effort at clearly and effectively communicating the current state of the university and articulating a shared vision of who we will be in the future.

Daniel Boorstein, former Librarian of Congress, said: "The greatest obstacle to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge." Some of us can cite the average ACT or SAT of last year's incoming class and list a few individual successes, but beyond that, most of us know very little about our students' profile or achievements ­ we know less about our alumni. In fact, our knowledge regarding the contributions of our colleagues is typically based on a few isolated cases. Importantly, our students actually know very little about the faculty and staff or their own peers.

If we asked the question "What can you say about Loyola?" we would get as many responses as the number of respondents. The problem is that we all see Loyola differently and most of us probably don't see Loyola how it really is. Yet, our own perceptions and interpretations of events and the internal communication patterns provide the foundation for the external flow of information. As W.I. Thomas once said: "What people believe to be real will be real in its consequences."

A well-developed integrated communication and marketing strategy is dependent upon the same data or information system that we need to support institutional effectiveness and that we need for the successful recruitment and retention of students. It necessitates a process which brings together the entire university community in order to enhance our knowledge and understanding of our university and its competitive advantage in the market place of higher education. It means developing an entire system of effectively acquiring and disseminating information to inform our internal and external constituencies. An integrated communication and marketing plan can be instrumental in establishing our national reputation, and help Loyola, an already great university, be even greater!

Lydia Voigt, Associate Provost