September 4, 2019 FAC/STAFF

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Sign Up for Next Week’s JCU Messaging and Brand Workshops

This is a reminder regarding Dr. Johnson’s Aug. 22 e-mail asking faculty and staff to sign up for the Carnegie Dartlet workshops on Sept. 9 and 10. Your participation in this project is crucial. Sign-up here: https://admission.jcu.edu/register/?id=df7965d0-7d94-4c99-977c-518773a48b2f

From: Office of the President
To: Faculty and Staff
Date: Aug. 22, 2019
Subject: A Message Regarding Carnegie Dartlet
Dear Members of the John Carroll Community,

As we adjust to the changing landscape in higher education, differentiating John Carroll University from other institutions becomes increasingly crucial. To stand out in a crowded and increasingly complicated industry, we must come together as a community to understand who we are as a University and then look externally to learn how we are perceived by the marketplace.

We must answer the following questions before we can deliver an authentic and compelling message that will resonate with a shifting demographic of students:

As an institution, who are we on our best day?
Who are we on our average day?
Who do we never want John Carroll to become?
Do we truly understand our external reputation?

To answer these questions, the Advancement and Enrollment divisions have retained Carnegie Dartlet to lead us in a research and consensus-building project to unite our constituents with a clear message. They will also help us to acutely understand our perception in the marketplace locally and regionally.

Carnegie Dartlet has been an industry leader in higher education marketing for more than 30 years, offering reputation research and strategy, creative, digital, lead generation, and specialization in crowd-sourced and consensus-driven processes to achieve authentic results. They have worked with colleges and universities across the country, including 17 Jesuit College and Universities. We anticipate that this project will take six (6) months to complete, and ultimately culminate in a new messaging and communication platform for our enrollment efforts.

Your participation in this project is crucial. Carnegie Dartlet’s method is entirely built around the input of the people who know John Carroll the best—our faculty, staff, students and alumni. Representatives from Carnegie Dartlet are on campus this week to begin the Discovery interviews process. They are conducting a competitive analysis and auditing our enrollment communications.

They will return to host a series of six (6) in-person workshops on September 9th and 10th. Your voice is essential to the success of this important work. This is an opportunity for you to share opinions and feedback about our strengths and where we can improve. We hope to actively engage more than 300 individuals over those two days in the process.

There are two distinct and integrated phases of workshops: Personality and Message. The Personality workshops define the authentic human personality of John Carroll University both today and tomorrow, while the Message workshops cascade these insights into storyline outcomes and deliverables. The results will unify our messaging and communication as we reach out to prospective students.

By the end of the fall semester, Carnegie Dartlet will share their findings and conduct training on campus.

This is exciting and important work that will support our entire community. Thank you in advance for your participation and active involvement in this process.

Sincerely,

Michael D. Johnson
President, John Carroll University