Promotion and outreach activities

The competitive nature of recruitment in Higher Education is clearly recognised. While a range of promotion and outreach activities, such as branding and student recruitment, are organised centrally within institutions, departments also have an important role to play in promoting themselves. To address this, the Department of Pure and Applied Chemistry at the University of Strathclyde appointed an Outreach Activities Champion over 15 years ago. Their task was to co-ordinate current outreach activity while also creating new opportunities to promote the department and courses. A relatively small team was established to implement this. A number of initiatives began to evolve through dialogue within this team and with colleagues in the secondary education sector. Successes in this area encouraged other colleagues to become involved in outreach activities. The department indicated further commitment with the appointment of a Marketing specialist who has taken responsibility for the design of our publicity material and the content of the Admissions page on our website. All external communications are produced to the highest specification to heighten the perception of the department as a professional organisation. As an indication of our commitment to outreach and the wide ranging scope of our activities, in 2011/12 we interacted with approximately 113 schools, 168 teachers and 2312 school pupils. Our presentation will describe the scope, and assess the success, of our activities to delegates.