Did You See That?
CURRENTS Article Part art and part science, a good video can be an incredibly powerful tool to connect with your audiences.

Recruitment Features: St. Christopher's School - Silver Award
Best Practice St. Christopher's School created a short recruitment video for the web--"Get Here!"--that built on that fact that once families visit the campus, they nearly always submit an application. The piece was posted online during summer 2007 and used to kickoff open house programs in the fall.

Recruitment Features: Northfield Mount Hermon School - Bronze Award
Best Practice Northfield Mount Hermon School produced a recruitment DVD for 2006-2007 that featured four videos that embodied the educational and student life experience through immersive stories of four or five students.

General Information Features: Louisiana State University - Bronze Medal
Best Practice Louisiana State University created "Welcome to LSU" -- a video to make new students feel welcome and good about having chosen LSU. The video was shown on a large screen in the Assembly Center to freshmen and other incoming new students, as well as during the Chancellor’s Welcome Convocation in September.

Recruitment Features: California State University, San Bernardino - Silver Medal
Best Practice The purpose of the recruitment video was to reach high school juniors and seniors (and their parents), as well as community college students, with the message that college can be a reality, and that Cal State San Bernardino is the college for them to be able to fulfill their education dreams.

Recruitment Features: Fountain Valley School of Colorado - Gold Medal
Best Practice In 2006, the Fountain Valley School of Colorado engaged in an institutional branding exercise and subsequently developed a marketing plan that called for the creation of the school's first DVD. The FVS strategy was to differentiate the school by its location (the Western region of the United States), opportunities, community and through genuine stories of students and faculty.

Recruitment Features: Reconstructionist Rabbinical College - Gold Medal
Best Practice The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, PA, is a fully accredited private graduate institution founded to serve the Jewish people and the Reconstructionist branch of Judaism. Its primary mission is to train rabbis and cantors. The college's primary academic offering is a rigorous five- to six-year professional program leading to a master of arts in Hebrew letters and the title of rabbi. The objectives of the college's recruitment video were to increase interest in the rabbinate and increase the pool of applicants.

PSAs and Commercial Spots: University of Alaska-Statewide - Silver Medal
Best Practice The University of Alaska’s fall 2006 advertising campaign included a series of seven short videos of students and their experiences at UA. Three spots, in rotation in Alaska as TV ads, pointed viewers to a site with four more videos and bios of featured students. The campaign also included print, radio, social networking site advertising and cinema slides. It was focused on a target audience of primarily 16-24 year-old prospective students in Alaska.

AdvanceWork: The One They'll Want
CURRENTS Article Tech-savvy prospective students appreciate cutting-edge tools that allow them to experience a campus in new ways, but they quickly become bored by tools that are obsolete. James Madison University sidestepped these problems by combining the strengths of a CD-ROM and the Internet into a single tool: the JMUOneDisc.

AdvanceWork: CD or not CD?
CURRENTS Article Specialists in student recruitment marketing are still debating the value of CD-ROMs vs. Web vs. paper publications. Interviews with four marketers reveal that two use Web and paper methods only; the other two like the increased capacity of CDs plus online plus paper. This Advancework item is of interest to marketers and PR people who deal with student recruitment.