In this world of digital and social media, traditional media still has a very important place at the table when it comes to showcasing your faculty. To accomplish this, you’ll need foresight and aggressiveness too. As colleges and universities compete for attention, faculty accomplishments and expertise can set a school apart. They influence rankings, admissions, recruitment, and overall perception.
Seeing your school’s name in a local or national publication is free marketing and helps raise the brand awareness, especially when you see a faculty member quoted by a prominent outlet on a significant story. Not only does it put your school in a national conversation, but it tells the public that someone within your institution was thought of highly enough to be used by the New York Times or Associated Press. What else must the school have expertise in?
How to Showcase Your Faculty in the Media
So how do you get there? For starters, you need a plan and willing participants who appreciate the need to not only educate students inside the classroom, but the masses outside of it. When I worked in academia, I reviewed the roster of faculty and identified those with expertise in fields the media would be interested in, and I kept an eye out for those who had real world experience. Maybe someone worked on Wall Street before becoming a finance professor, or ran a non-profit before becoming a social work professor or maybe an immigration lawyer before coming to the law school. I found that being able to reference that real-world experience only helped with a professor’s credibility because it gave a reporter something relatable to hang their hat on.
After identifying willing faculty, it’s important to be ready to fit into the news cycle. One effective way is to have a roster of professors who can provide immediate analysis to reporters when news breaks. Instead of waiting for the phone to ring, be proactive—get a few thoughts from that professor on a topic making news and send those quotes, at BG we call them “Source Sheets,”—to reporters who are writing about that topic. The key is to reach reporters quickly in the hopes they will a) pick up the phone and want to talk with your professor or b) copy and paste the quote and insert it into their story. If nothing else, you’ve let the reporter know of this faculty member’s expertise which might pay dividends in the future when the reporter writes another story on the topic. And when you send these source sheets frequently, reporters will start calling you looking for experts.
Leveraging Op-Eds to Showcase Your Faculty
Writing Op-Eds is another effective way to insert faculty expertise into the national dialogue. Identify faculty who can quickly write a piece that offers solutions or an interesting and against-the-grain take on an issue. Keep in mind that the best way to place an Op-ed is by saying something different than what everyone else is.
For significant news events, sending out pre-approved quotes from experts is a great way to place your faculty in the national media conversation. For example, just before Pope Francis visited the United States, I pitched several source sheets from our university’s theologians. They offered insight on what the visit meant, the message to expect, and how it might play in America. Our office then lined up television, radio, and newspaper interviews with reporters who contacted us after receiving the faculty comments. You can do the same for an upcoming State of the Union speech, a Supreme Court ruling, or a presidential debate. Faculty can also comment on events like Giving Tuesday or major anniversaries. For example, the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana’s death. Another option is to have an economist ready to analyze the Monthly Jobs Report, released at 8:30 a.m. on the first Friday.
Highlighting Faculty Research to Showcase Your Faculty
Every college has go-to faculty members who are a reporter’s dream. But other professors excel in research, and sharing their work with the public is just as important. It’s critical to maintain relationships with faculty across your university so you can learn about research before it is published. A professor may explore sound and color in business or study gender’s impact on decisions. Research that affects daily life often attracts media coverage. Read the research papers and gather quotes directly from the professors. Incorporate these quotes into short news releases or media pitches. This approach not only earns coverage but also strengthens faculty relations by showing that you genuinely care about their work.
Lastly, pay attention to what your faculty are doing outside of the classroom. The university I worked at had a finance professor who developed a family game board. It was sold all over the world. The school also had a photography professor I nicknamed the “Father of the Selfie.” He had been taking a picture of his face every day for 30 years—and he’s still going. Although these stories don’t relate directly to classroom work, national media picked them up. They provided another way to showcase your faculty.