Parking Deck Marketing Gone With the Wind

Update (2/10): The marketing signage is going back up around the construction site.  Hooray!

Sorry, but this one is just too juicy to miss. During the deconstruction of the parking deck east of Faner a fence set up to keep folks out of harm's way was decorated with new marketing materials.  "Know No Bounds" and the like, with pictures of earnest but happy students eagerly engaged in research with inspiring professors. Or at least attractive people posing as such. I don't know about you, but I certainly found it inspirational.

Alas, the banners that covered the chain link fence do not seem to have been designed with wind in mind; they did not have those little vents built into them, as more sensible banners do. Hence, during the rough weather we've had the last couple of days they appeared, according to my informant, to be threatening to tear up the fence by acting as giant sails. Certainly the banners are now down, leaving a clear view through the chain link fence of the ruin that was the parking deck, an area cleared in order to make way for the new $34.5 million Student Services Building. According to my sources, the cost for the now discarded banners was a mere $40,000. Just a drop in the bucket.

Rebranding, phase 2

As the Chancellor announced in an email sent last week November 21 (pasted at the end of this post), we're off on the second phase of the new marketing campaign, "big things within reach". I suspect this phase will get rather better reviews than the logo, though that of course isn't saying much. Here's one new print ad: 

(Click on the ad to enlarge it.)

Like the other ads in this new campaign, this one emphasizes research, particularly research in the sciences, which is, of course, easier to sell than research in the humanities, though as a humanist I'll go ahead and be slightly offended. Green research is particularly emphasized (though I wonder, without any particular expertise, just how "green" "clean coal" is ever going to be). But emphasizing research is a good thing. Attracting students excited about research is a good thing. Further discussion, including my recurring concerns about this marketing campaign, after the break. 

[One caveat up front: this analysis is largely that of the latest phase in the ad campaign. An analysis of the full "viewbook" released some time ago would emphasize different points, and fill in some of the gaps I find in the much shorter materials used in print and radio ads.]

Hughes v. Cheng

Dueling emails this evening, as FA President Randy Hughes attempted to rally faculty for the demonstration tomorrow at 11-1 (at Grand Ave and Route 51), while the Chancellor attempts to rain on the union parade by pointing to the "false assumptions that appear to be held in some parts of a campus".

Hughes' email, which includes a report from the FA bargaining team, makes it clear that little progress has been made during the first bargaining sessions this fall. In addition to the perennial issues of tenure and furloughs, there is a cluster of issues about distance learning. While the administration has made a positive step by moving control over distance education from continuing education to academic units, it appears to be insisting on the right to require individual faculty members to teach distance learning courses, to outsource distance learning work to other institutions, and to not include distance learning students when calculating the student/Faculty ratio the contract is supposed to protect.

The bargaining team also reports that they have been told that the Chancellor is working hard to attempt to offer faculty the following generous compensation package:  -2% for FY 11 (counting furloughs); 0%  for FY 12; 0.5% for FY 13, and a whopping 1% for FY 14. Some context: the current rate of inflation (as measured by the CPI) is 3.6%. SIUC's budget (tuition and fees + state appropriations) for next year, assuming static enrollment, will go up $4.1 million dollars in FY 2012 (-$1.3 in state appropriations, +$5.4 million in tuition and fees--this from the reports the Chancellor references in her email).  That's approximately a 2% increase in the budget (tuition & fees and state appropriations). Thus SIUC has a hiring freeze for faculty, decreasing our numbers greatly, and says that, over a four year contract period, it can't even compensate faculty for the 2% cut they took last year. I believe it is safe to conclude that the administration plans to give Faculty a smaller and smaller share of campus resources.

After the break, a first take on the Chancellor's email.

Poshard on performance funding, marketing, enrollment

A more journalistic wrap up of Poshard's interview on WSIU.

Enrollment. The closest thing to news in the interview was Poshard's prediction that overall enrollment would be "about flat". The best he seems to be hoping for is that it will be better this time around than the 300 student decline we had last fall. Marketing, whatever its virtues, isn't going to help us retain students, which seems to be the biggest problem around here (unless, I suppose, marketing can land us more students with more staying power--better students).  More on performance based funding, logogate, and Poshard's goals after the break.

Cheng on WSIU, Part the First: Logogate

I was feverishly finishing up syllabi yesterday so managed to avoid listening to Chancellor's Cheng special "Morning Conversation" of Friday until today; she was invited to respond to "clear the air" about certain questions raised by the Board of Trustees and yours truly. Plus she'll be back on Monday! Here I'll respond to what she said about the BOT special meeting and the concerns raised about marketing. A second post will follow, probably tomorrow.

Why did the BOT call a special meeting about the logo? The Chancellor really hit this question out of the park: the Board of Trustees has four new members who don't know what the hell they're doing. So she'll spoon feed them next time. That will go over well.

Marketing. The Chancellor started by saying the new logo did not cost $1.5 million. I'm not sure where that figure came from (she just blurted it out during the interview); rather, the spending went for all sorts of marketing efforts. Obviously the logo itself didn't cost $1.5 million (it looks more like about $1.50). The charge she raised is a straw man--perhaps she has learned something from our ace debate team. Then she argued that most spending was facilitated by "reallocating and reallignment" of current spending and staff. She said that almost all of the $1.5 million was covered by via savings, moving SIUC communications staff to other areas, etc.  This is a more substantive response. Is it true?

Linking the library

[See Julie Arendt's comment below for a couple of corrections.]

Apparently the Morris library staff is a bit irked at how hard the library is to find from our splendid new website.  They are passing out slips of paper encouraging folks to  email the University Web Advisory Group (uwag@siu.edu) to ask why Morris doesn't qualify for a link. So, let's see, as of 3:56 pm on Thursday, Morris library cannot be found under "About SIU".  It's not under "Academics".  It's not under "Research".  It's not under Info For "Current Students" or "Future Students".  You can, however, find it under info for Faculty and Staff (it's the seventh item under "Academics" on that page; "Office of the Provost" is the first). I suppose faculty and staff may care about the library.

I frankly don't see what the library staff are complaining about. You would have thought they'd have seen the writing on the wall when we left the books out past the Poultry Center. Athletics gets a full tab, top center, equal billing with academics and research. What is there to complain about?

Another little thing that some people will find only a triviality, others will find a telling illustration of the way things work around here.  A more serious analysis follows after the break.

On Bike Racks

[Note: I've spent too much time in the last couple of days responding to a spirited attack on the FA's position on the tenure debate in the comment stream for the last post.  As usual, much of the value of this blog lies in in the comments.  Do check them out.] 

I bike to campus most days. The DE today ran a story on our new bike racks that has gotten me to scratching my head. It nicely summarizes much of what I'm feeling about campus these days.

My take on the new bike racks when I saw them a few weeks ago was, well, (surprise!)  negative. This for a rather simple reason. In the area I lock up my bike, near the student center end of Faner, the old bike racks were often pretty full. The new bikes have less than one half of the capacity of the old racks. The old racks were efficient and effective. I'm not talking about the gadgety relics near the Museum end of Faner, which were hardly recognizable as bike racks at all and were almost never used, but the humble effective racks at the other end of Faner, and elsewhere on campus.  The new racks are, however, prettier. And they are painted Saluki Maroon, aiding our campus branding. But the story gets more complicated, after the break.  

A speech for the Chancellor

I've been asked, reasonably enough, whether I'd ever approve of something the Chancellor proposes. So here's a suggested speech. I hereby give Chancellor Cheng carte blanche to use it as she chooses.  Neither consultant's fee nor charges of plagiarism shall apply.

We all know that SIUC faces a difficult budgetary situation, and that SIUC faces a long-term enrollment decline. I'm convinced that we need to improve our campus athletics and administrative facilities; to upgrade our marketing by developing a new message and doubling our spending to communicate it to the world; to continue aggressively funding scholarships for our student athletes and other aspects of our athletics budget; to set up innovative Saluki First Year and Saluki Start Up programs; and to put greater resources into more effective enrollment management. And we need to get the best people we can to fill top administrative positions, and pay them competitive salaries.  None of these moves will be cheap: in fact I believe that we must increase our spending in these areas by X million dollars in the next Y years if we are to get ourselves where we need to be in these crucial priorities. But if we do not up our game in these ways we may well face a bleak future.

To fund these priorities we are going to have to hold the line on spending on faculty and staff. 

I thank my lucky stars for our brand new logo

I thought I was done for the day--or even, with luck, for the week.  But precisely at the moment when one wheels out bad news stories (didn't she ask her marketers about this?), our Chancellor has written a welcome back email that spends a good deal of time discussing her new marketing campaign but wastes not a single word on stalled negotiations between her administration and the unions representing thousands of the people receiving her email.

Even if you think the unions are full of it, that they don't represent you, that everyone in the FA is a complete jackass--don't you think she ought to have made at least some passing bland aside expressing her fond hopes to resolve these issues amicably?  Isn't it, well, contemptuous to pretend that there's no problem?

Our brave new branding campaign has its own website, and of course there is a brand new logo, which is "both sophisticated yet familiar" and which is, I believe, the third we've had since I joined SIUC in the late nineties (though I may have missed one or two).

In with the new.

Out with the old.

  

Apparently "Southern" reeked too much of Walter Wendler to be left as is, and clearly Carbondale has been demoted.  I think our counterparts at the flourishing SIU campus, SIUE, will be pleased as punch to see that we're claiming the shorter SIU solely for ourselves (as the Chancellor repeatedly says she is speaking for SIU, not SIUC).  Apparently those little white shadows in the SIU tell our new story. And the bell tower, which reminded people of stodgy old academic stuff, had to go.

And can't someone fix her damn apostrophes?

Just one more observation. I find it particularly rich that we are all encouraged to join in "critical conversations" about our strategic plan (the effort to revamp or replace Southern at 150), which is obviously still underway.  But our marketers are ready to tell our story even before we've decided what our story is. (Not that I take the strategic planning to be any more valuable than the marketing, but still.)

Okay, enjoy your new logo.