June 26, 2008
 It is safe to say that the economic landscape of the country is uncertain to say the least. More and more, adults are returning to the classroom to gain the skills to pursue better-paying jobs, start a new career, or simply follow as their heart leads them to a new avocation.
At Temple University Ambler, the Marketing, Admissions, and Public Relations departments are working hard — and have brought in some outside help — to determine how best to attract adult students how best to serve them when they arrive.
Plans to promote everything that that Ambler campus has to offer adult students have all of the trappings of a major marketing campaign. From management to media services, the “company” involved to assist in this campaign has everything expected of a major marketing firm.
Most of the employees of the company, however, haven’t even begun their professional careers yet.
On Monday, June 30, Temple University Associate Professor Jim Hunt’s Promotion Management class will present full details of the marketing campaign it has developed for Temple University Ambler’s Marketing and Public Relations Department. The presentation will take place at 10 a.m. in the Learning Center.
“What I do is break the class up as if it were a real company. We have three people in management and four in account services, which connects the ‘company’ to the client,” Hunt said of the summer class, which is held at the Ambler campus. “The creative services team develops the television and print ads, while media services develops a strategy to position the Ambler campus in new ways for the adult education market. We also have a research services team, which has conducted surveys.”
Hunt said since the project was assigned, the students approach class each day just as they would a real job, getting right to work to ensure that deadlines and client expectations are met.
“They essentially replicate everything an agency would go through on a large project like this,” he said. “What we want to do is give the students a real-world situation to work through, to give them experience in the working world before they ever even get their undergraduate degree.”
Rachel Berger, Marketing and Special Events Coordinator at Temple University Ambler, has been working closely with the students for the past several weeks.
“Since the campus is working hard to reach adult students, I thought this was a great opportunity to complete some much-needed market research and get some fresh eyes looking at this particular area of our marketing plan, while additionally giving the students some hands-on experience while learning about a different side of the marketing world,” she said. “Many of their assignments in other classes may deal with large corporations, but now they get to work with a public, non-profit institution that can be classified as providing a service or ‘intangible’ good. I met with the class early in the semester and spoke with the students about the goals for the campus and what we are currently doing to reach adult students.”
During the June 30 class, students will give a formal presentation that proposes a comprehensive marketing campaign intended to “help us achieve the goal of reaching out to prospective adult students,” Berger said.
“I'm really excited to see what they suggest, and we may very well be able to implement some of their suggestions. It’s a great opportunity for them to see their coursework come to fruition in a real-life setting.
Hunt said while the companies or businesses the class works with are under no actual contractual obligation, “we have had a lot of people use the creative ideas our students developed.” Previous “clients” have included the Philadelphia Zoo, the Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Elmwood Park Zoo, the Mercer Museum, and the Michener Museum.
“I like to gear the project more toward non-profit organizations since they are so much a part of the community,” he said. “It gives our students another way to gain experience in their own communities.”
For more information on the Promotion Management project, call 267-468-8108.
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