Spinning Your Own Story - Marketing the Geosciences to the Public
Abstract
Studies of high achieving African-American and Hispanic students have shown the students do not go into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) disciplines due to the poor teaching by some STEM teachers, lack of encouragement from teachers or parents and a self perception the students will not be successful. One underlying component to this problem is the issue of perception of the STEM disciplines by the general public. This study focuses on changing the often negative or neutral perception into one more positive and diverse. This study utilizes clear, and hopefully effective, media communication through the use of traditional marketing strategies to promote the geosciences and the geology program at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to the general public in the Chattanooga metropolitan area. Average citizens are generally unaware of the various geoscience divisions and career opportunities available. Pioneer marketing, used in this study, introduces new ideas and concepts to the general public, but does not ask for direct action to be taken. The primary goal is to increase awareness of the geosciences. The use of printed and online media delivers the message to the public. In the media, personal interviews with geoscientists from all races and backgrounds were included to demonstrate diversity. An invitation was made to all high school students to participate in an associated after-school program. Elements developed for this program include: 1) clearly defining goals for the marketing effort; 2) delineating the target market by age, education, race and gender; 3) developing a story to tell in the marketing effort; and 4) producing products to achieve the marketing goals. For this effort, the product results included: an annual newspaper tabloid, an associated website and a departmental brochure. The marketing results show increased public awareness, increased awareness of the geology program within the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga system, increased goodwill with the local newspaper, and increased participation in the after- school program from students in the metro area.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2006
- Bibcode:
- 2006AGUFMPA53A..05S
- Keywords:
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- 0815 Informal education;
- 0855 Diversity;
- 6699 General or miscellaneous;
- 9810 New fields (not classifiable under other headings)