The University’s Office of Marketing and Communication is working with 160 over 90, a branding agency, to rebrand the University of Hartford.
This is a three-year program, and for this first year, they have focused on improving the undergraduate prospective student experience. However, the future has a lot in store.
Mildred McNeill, the Executive Director of Marketing and Communication at the University, described the program in saying, “We are just actually just revamping a lot of our publications, we’re gonna be redoing our web page, and we’re just trying to also change our messaging when we make speeches and that type of thing when we talk about the University.”
The project has already accomplished a lot. One aspect that students have walked past every day is the inspirational banners that have been hung up around campus. These banners have quotes on them such as the one on B complex that states, “Make Your Life a Masterpiece”, or the one on the Mortensen Library that states, “Great Success Starts Where Giving Up Ends”.
There are also plans for YouTube videos, increased advertising, and expanding/switching out these banners as the school years go by. Campus tours have been addressed as well, with increased publication for the University put up in the Bates House.
Many other colleges and universities get their name out there for incoming college students to recognize. McNeill says the University of Hartford needs to heighten its awareness and really break through to get people’s attention and show all of the majors and opportunities that are available here.
She says, “The fact that we offer all of those things is truly unique and in a small setting, so that we don’t have classes of 200 to 400 people so, that’s a part of the whole mentoring thing, too, is that you can get to know your professor, you can get to know the other people in your class very well.”
The mentoring that McNeill is talking about is relating to how special the University is in its faculty and staff reaching out to students.
Whether students do not know what they want to do, or already know, professors here take pride in helping to direct and guide them in a successful direction.
As McNeill put it, “The University’s underlying brand is that we want to take people and help them become who they can be. We want to challenge them, but we want to be supportive and we want our graduates to leave here understanding that they’re capable of doing anything they want to do.”
