General Goals

The primary goal of the STARS Alliance project is to broaden participation in computing and information technology (IT) by increasing enrollment in participating universities. With this focus, our marketing and dissemination plan has been designed to reach out to a broad set of targeted audiences organized in regional impact zones (RIZs).

SLC outreach is the primary mode in which to establish each university's regional impact zone. The figure below helps illustrate the inside-out approach to creating each zone:

• The Internal Zone represents the inner circle around your department and involves outreach to academic advisors, other related programs (i.e. computer clubs, freshman/dorm interest groups, etc.), and career centers.
• The External Zone represents outreach to middle school/high school counselors and in-class presentations, community/technical two-year colleges, community groups, and local businesses.

While handing out marketing kits and giving presentations:

• Wear your shirts
• Hand out business cards
• Hand out your department marketing material

Distributing Marketing Kits

Marketing kits were distributed to each university, each of which contains a set of marketing material designed to be used by academic advisors/school counselors to educate and promote careers in computing and IT through our STARS Alliance Web site.

It is recommended that the marketing kits are distributed as follows:

Internal Impact Zone

1. University Advisors (five marketing kits)
2. Career Center and Other Depts. (two marketing kits)

External Impact Zone

1. Middle & High School Counselors (eight marketing kits)
2. Community/Technical Colleges (five marketing kits)
3. Businesses (two marketing kits)

Here is the recommended process for distributing a marketing kit:

1. Make an appointment with an academic counselor or school counselor.
2. Email research consent form and brief computing and IT online survey.
3. Deliver marketing kit and confirm that advisor/counselor has completed the survey.
4. In six-months, follow-up with advisor/counselor and have them take the same online survey.
5. How to use your marketing Cheat Sheet

If you have any questions regarding this process please contact either Anthony Chow at anthonychow@starsalliance.org or Jennifer Thomas at jenniferthomas@starsalliance.org.

STARS Alliance Marketing & Dissemination Plan

Below is our full marketing & dissemination plan which focuses on six major objectives:

1. Marketing & Dissemination
   • Marketing Research
   • STARS Alliance Branding
   • A Web Portal
   • Targeted marketing, recruitment, and dissemination
   • PSAs and STAR powered support of BPC
   • BPC National Academic Conference
     

   

   The Dominator Program has been designed to reward participating universities in the following categories:

   • Which university will generate the most Web traffic to www.starsalliance.org?
   • Which university will hand out the most marketing kits?
   • Which university will have the most presentation attendees?