THE NOVEMBER 14 BOARD MEETING, Part II

As I indicated yesterday, Monday night's Board discussion of marketing and outreach was kinda interesting, if "interesting" means "worrisome."

It started with the grilling of Tracy Daly, the gal in charge of marketing and chirpiness. Tracy explained that IVC's pattern of enrollment decline has ceased, and Saddleback's enrollments are slightly on the upswing. She's no logician. She immediately and unapologetically attributed these trends to her much-ballyhooed "Next Step"/Surfer marketing campaign. --You know, the one in which a moron represents studentry and our colleges are like wax.

(The campaign is not "ballyhooed" on the cover of the latest Lariat, which declares: "Ad campaign reviews mixed: campaign fails to attract many students despite winning national marketing award.")

Some trustees questioned the reliability of Tracy's "post hoc" reasoning. Good for them. I like Tracy, but a fallacy is a fallacy.

In the course of the discussion, Trustee Fuentes displayed his philosophical repulsion at the very idea of our luring students to our colleges. Something deep within him causes the fellow to cringe and squirm and squeal at the very thought of messin' with the "marketplace."

And this phenomenon of district's poaching in other district's territories? Well, that's a "cancer." That Fuentes sure has a way with words. He's got a point, though. Why don't all the districts get together and declare a moratorium on poachitude? Wouldn't that be sensible? For all I know, they're doing that.

Another aspect of the discussion concerned the responsibility of faculty for outreachery at the High Schools. Some have suggested that faculty are inclined to resist participation in outreach, and if they're gonna do it, they oughta be compensated.

Naturally, Trustee Fuentes seems to view such attitudes as a further demonstration of his Lazy and Overpaid thesis re full-time faculty, which he articulated on TV a year or so ago.

Check out his suggestions about luring "star" part-timers. Maybe you can explain to me what he's saying.

In the end, the item--a request for a big chunk of basic aid money--passed, with only Fuentes and Wagner voting against it.

FUENTES: ...Will [this marketing] be in our district geographically? Or are we talking about advertising and promoting like the other districts do outside of [their own] district?

DALY: Most of it’s here in our district.

FUENTES: All right. I think that’s something we need to come to grips with in clarity. It is a cancer that has spread among the districts, that there is this competitive recruitment, and it’s costing us, and it’s costing our taxpayers, and it’s costing the taxpayers of other districts. I wanted to respond to a comment that Trustee Milchiker made about our experience at Irvine Valley’s forum. I guess it’s who hears it, but I heard that very enthusiastic teacher [Spanish instructor Jeanne E.] tell us of her and her husband’s experience in outreaching, and going to visit other campuses, and the non-doing of that by others. I heard her say how few visited other campuses, that day that we went as a Board to sit in that forum. There were only six or seven teachers that came to visit with us, and she made the point, I thought, that more [instructors] needed to participate as she and husband did to go out to the campus….

…We talked about gas prices. And I related that, when this subject was first brought up, that I had a family room full of 18 to 20 year olds, because my son is a college freshman, and that was early in the semester. And many of those young fellas—surfers all—were going to OCC and to Golden West, and I can report to you, on the most unscientific poll ever taken, that they have decided now, at three dollars a gallon, to return to our local campuses! And I think the marketplace is at work, and it’s going to play a role in this.

Now, one of the most striking marketing things that I heard in recent weeks was an ad by our colleagues over at UCI, touting the quality of their teachers, being No. 5 in the nation, a striking contribution and quality in our community. Bill [he turns to Bill Jay] has addressed the merits of part-time faculty, and I would think we ought as a Board be thinking about more part-time faculty, especially star faculty that we might recruit from UCI to come over and teach some courses that would be a draw to students. These young people [students] shop the marketplace; these students look for name and identity, and I think we need to think outside the box and take advantage of the opportunity of part-time teachers. Maybe some of those part-time teachers that [students] are presently going to OCC and Golden West to take classes from might be available to us….

PADBERG: I am going to support the item. One thing that, I think, we’re missing…is the complaint that I hear from my constituent groups that there are not enough classes of the required courses for transfer for students, or they’re not scheduled at convenient times, so [students] have to go to other colleges…to get those. I know that this has been an experience of friends of mine….

HO: …I think the main detractors for students who live in our district, we are not meeting the demand of the classes, and that’s why I propose a mechanism in which we can see, recognize the demand…and respond to it…. [Ho is referring to wait lists and surveys.]

WAGNER: I think I agree with everything Trustee Jay said except his part about supporting the item. I think you’re absolutely right-on about what we need to do in terms of finding out what the students want, and what’s troubled me about this item, what troubled me …when the million dollar item came to us [months ago], and we scaled it back to $100,000—…our focus here with this program is still the wrong focus. What the hundred thousand should have been spent doing was answering the questions that Trustee Jay has asked. What do the students want? Not, OK, let’s try something new; let’s try a new coordinated marketing campaign; let’s do a surfer and have a logo. –All of those may be appropriate down the road, but I don’t feel we’ve done our homework to know that those are what’s appropriate…We aren’t sure we even need a marketing program, and we won’t know what a marketing program ought to say until we know why we don’t have the enrollment we want, and that’s things like, surveys of other districts and what they offer, that’s things like surveys of our students…Those are the things that we ought to be spending a hundred thousand dollars for.

LANG: …There’s a lot of wisdom in some of your comments…I don’t think there’s any question that we need to have a marketing program. I think the question is, is what the focus of that marketing program needs to be…We’re trying a lot of soft things—putting ads in movie theaters, etc…and we really don’t have a good idea whether that’s going to generate the additional student enrollment that we’d like to see…If we understand that students are looking to have a unique program here that they can’t get somewhere else, perhaps that’s what will generate additional student enrollment…It’s seems to me that…one good use of funds…would be to do some polling, to find out, OK, what is it that’s going to bring students here?

[Traci then explained that much of the work that Wagner and Lang identified as important is actually being done by enrollment management groups on the two campuses; they are active and they meet each week, she said. Chancellor Mathur, too, explained that the item under discussion concerns only marketing, and that much other work is being done beyond the marketing.]

MILCHIKER: [Reading from her notes for the forum:] Jeannie Egasse said that she wasn’t sure that Frisbees and surfer logos and things worked. Her kids are surfers, and her kids really didn’t like these things…She said other teachers would like to go out [for outreach at High Schools], but they would like to be given some release time so that they don’t have to go out on their own time….