Tech Expands Grad Program Marketing With Encouraging Results

Tennessee Tech launched a digital marketing campaign geared toward spurring interest in graduate programs.

The new campaign has been met with encouraging numbers of new masters students applying for Tech graduate programs. College of Graduate Studies Associate Dean Alice Camuti said the campaign had various aspects including social media. Camuti said the effort included email campaigns and blogs focused on certain market segments including healthcare, business, and online programs.

“I have a bachelors degree in marketing, so I am very happy,” Camuti said. “I’ll just tell you, because I truly live and breath marketing and to be able to implement something like this for the good of the university and for the good of people who want to meet their personal, professional goals is very rewarding.”

Camuti said that Tech enrolled about 100 new graduate students in this fall semester, which has left her team feeling accomplished.

Camuti said many working professionals who are looking to be promoted in their job often need graduate degrees to be better noticed. Camuti said after realizing this, her team worked on finding where they could reach these adults and expose them to Tech’s graduate opportunities.

“You can see in the number of people who have undergraduate degrees these days, that number keeps going up,” Camuti said. “But not as many have the graduate degree, so probably only eight percent of the population have graduate degrees, so it sets people apart in the workplace.”

Camuti said that Tech saw a spike in graduate applicants during 2020 COVID lock-downs, largely because citizens were stuck at home. Camuti said many of those students are graduating now, which helped motivate Tech in finding a new way to attract applicants.

“The interest and the engagement has been very promising for us,” Camuti said. “That we’re hopefully being able to fill a need that’s out within these different cities within Tennessee.”