A survey was sent out to faculty, staff, students and alumni to help develop a comprehensive marketing campaign.

“We need to know more about ourselves so that we can do a better job of letting others know about the university,” said President Bill Perry.

The survey, sent on Thursday via e-mail, will help evaluate the reputation of the university among a variety of audiences.

The survey is altered depending on what group it is sent to.

The survey for a current student will look a little different than the survey for a current employee.

In a letter outlining his goals for the university last January, Perry said he wanted to enhance the marketing efforts.

“One of the things that I found out when I met with faculty, staff and student groups last year and folks from off campus too, alumni, is a pretty uniform sentiment that we can do a better job at marketing the university,” Perry said. “By that I mean, letting people know what we stand for, who we are, what we do, all the great things that go on here.”

In response to this, University Marketing and Communications asked Statmats, a higher education research and consulting firm, to work with the university in identifying the best way to promote the university with regard to students, alumni and current faculty and staff, said Jill Nilsen, vice president for external affairs.

“We’re trying to analyze how do those various groups view the university and is there differences between those groups and the way they view the university,” Nilsen said.

Nilsen said marketing for the university currently includes talk of close interpersonal relationships on campus, faculty and staff working closely with students both in and out of the classroom, a safe campus, excellent academic programs, as well as great personal experiences.

“These are the things that we’ve been saying about the campus,” Nilsen said. “What this survey will help us determine is if each of those groups that we’re targeting, if their perception of campus matches what we’re saying about the campus.”

She said if the university is saying one thing, but participants say that doesn’t match what is happening to them at all, then that part of the marketing campaign needs to be looked at more carefully.

“We’re saying this about our campus because we believe it, but if the groups that we’re surveying don’t believe it or don’t experience it then we’ve got to figure out what’s happening and put a plan together to do a better job,” Nilsen said.

Once the survey is completed, Stamats will take the information and do a statistical analysis before presenting the information to the university.

Nilsen said she received an excited e-mail Thursday night from the research analyst.

The survey had just been sent on Thursday afternoon and Nilsen said the research analyst had already received 1,500 responses by 6 p.m.

“The Stamats people were very excited with that kind of response rate so quickly,” she said.

Emily Zulz can be reached at 581-7942 or at eazulz@eiu.edu.