Submitted by Jamie Lynn Gilbert

HIGHLIGHTS

• 389 individual students expressed interest in at least one medium during the recruitment period (down slightly from 399 in 2009).
  • Reached 226 freshmen during New Student Orientation.
  • Reached 28 new transfer students during transfer orientation.
  • Reached 55 new graduate students during graduate orientation.
  • Reached 80 students of indeterminate class status at Cates Crawl and the Student Media open house.
• Overall, 905 unique contacts were made with 389 students (up from 772 contacts in 2009).
  • Although students continue to express interest in multiple media, they generally only join one staff. Photographers may take assignments from multiple media, but usually only maintain staff status for one medium.
• Average media selected per person = 2.32 (up from 1.93 in 2009, 1.85 in 2008, 1.76 in 2007 and 1.32 in 2006)
• 75 individuals attended the Student Media open house, up from 62 in 2009 but still down from 81 individuals in 2008.
  • 45 of the 75 individuals who attended the open house expressed interest at a prior recruitment effort (60 percent of open house attendees, up from 52 percent in 2009).
  • 22 of the 75 individuals who attended the open house joined a medium’s staff (29 percent of open house attendees).
• The number of students contacted by an editor/manager by the Monday following each week’s efforts increased from 53 percent in 2009 to 76 percent in 2010. It had been 72 percent in 2007 and 2008.
• All interested students were contacted eventually this year, while only 82 percent were contacted in 2009.
• 11 individuals from Cates Crawl also attended the Student Media Open House (18 percent of all those reached at Cates Crawl, down from 21 percent in 2009).
• 13 of the 26 individuals enrolled in the WKNC training class expressed interest at one of our recruitment efforts, with four attending the open house.
• 45 of the individuals who expressed an interest in Student Media joined the staff (12 percent, the same as in 2009, but down from 14 percent in 2008 and 16 percent in 2007 and 2006)
• 40 of those individuals who expressed an interest were retained (10 percent of total recruited, up from 8 percent in 2009, down from 14 percent in 2007 and 2006 and even with the 10 percent in 2008.)

CONCLUSIONS

• Having a student from the business office compile the initial orientation reports and send a welcome e-mail remains incredibly valuable and time-saving for the professional staff. The initial email also allows invalid e-mail addresses to be corrected before being sent to the student editors.
• According to New Student Orientation, 4,435 students came through the 17 freshman orientation sessions. We made contact with 226, which represents five percent of the incoming class.
• Student Media opted out of recruitment efforts at new student convocation, the Back to School Jam and the Brickyard organization fair, as well as a new event called Welcome Back, Pack! This had no apparent impact on post-orientation recruitment, as our number of contacts was up from 2009. We should continue to center later efforts on Cates Crawl and the Student Media Open House.

NEW STUDENT ORIENTATION
This was the second year New Student Orientation had 17 freshman sessions and two transfer sessions. Editors/managers were provided with a list of interested students at the end of each of the five weeks. The contacted field represents the number of individuals contacted by the Monday following each week’s orientation, while eventually means the editor/manager contacted students before the end of the recruitment period. Editors/managers much more consistently copied orientation@sma.ncsu.edu this year than in previous ones.

College of Engineering (ENG) students represented the largest recruitment group, with 55 individuals. The second largest group was CHASS with 53 students. The First Year College (with the transition program) accounted for 45 interested students. Interesting to note is that 58 CALS students indicated interest in Student Media in 2009, but only 21 did in 2010.

New Student Orientation 2010

#	College	Individuals	Contacts	Contacted	Eventually	Response
1	FYC	25	60	38	60	0
2	FYC/TRANS	12	33	20	33	0
3	FYC	8	18	15	18	0
4	CALS	9	11	10	11	0
5	CALS	3	5	4	5	0
6	CALS	9	14	12	14	0
7	CHASS	29	78	34	78	0
8	CHASS	24	47	19	47	0
9	COM/NAT RES	13	28	10	28	0
10	COM/EDU	5	12	4	12	0
11	COM/PAMS	5	8	8	8	0
12	DES/ENG	23	79	73	79	0
13	ENG	21	28	25	28	0
14	ENG	8	16	16	16	0
15	ENG	10	19	16	16	0
16	ENG	6	9	7	9	0
17	TEX/AG INST	16	44	30	44	0
T1	Transfer #1	16	51	32	51	0
T2	Transfer #2	12	24	17	24	0
		254	584	390	584	0

Overall Comparisons for New Student Orientation 2006-2010

	Individuals	Contacts	Contacted	Eventually	Response
2010	254	584	390 (67%)	584 (100%)	0 (0%)
2009	253	504	342 (68%)	504 (100%)	55 (11%)
2008	198	365	289 (79%)	N/R	51 (14%)
2007	165	312	238 (76%)	N/R	46 (15%)
2006	230	304	135 (44%)	N/R	N/R

POST-ORIENTATION
Student Media participated in three recruitment efforts beyond new student and transfer student orientation. We again hosted an open house on the Monday of the first week of classes, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. The first two hours of open house coincided with Cates Crawl, where we also had a table. Our third post-orientation recruitment effort was to staff an information table during graduate student orientation. Convocation and the brickyard organization fair saw a decline in student interest in 2008 and 2009, resulting in those being cut from Student Media’s recruitment efforts in 2010.

Post-Orientation 2010

Date	Event	Individuals	Contacts	Contacted	Eventually	Response
8/17	Open House	75	98	94	98	0
8/17	Cates Crawl	60	108	106	108	0
8/17	Grad Orientation	55	178	164	178	2
		190	384	364	384	2

Duplicate individuals/contacts are included in these numbers, but separated from final totals.

Overall Comparisons for Post-Orientation 2007-2010

	Individuals	Contacts	Contacted	Eventually	Response
2010	190	384	364 (95%)	384 (100%)	2 (1%)
2009	190	317	78 (25%)	146 (46%)	4 (1%)
2008	236	403	196 (49%)	N/R	18 (4%)
2007	127	169	N/R	N/R	N/R

Overall Recruitment Comparisons 2006-2010

	Individuals	Contacts	Contacted	Eventually	Response
2010	389	905	691 (76%)	905 (100%)	2 (0%)
2009	399	774	412 (53%)	636 (82%)	62 (8%)
2008	382	709	507 (72%)	N/R	74 (10%)
2007	273	481	346 (72%)	N/R	86 (18%)
2006	230	304	135 (44%)	N/R	N/R

All duplicate individuals/contacts have been removed from these numbers.

BY MEDIA
Wolf TV joined the Student Media family in 2009 as part of the Technician. Design returned as an option for students to select in 2009 after being absent in 2007 and 2008. We also chose to discontinue recruitment specifically for online media since we do not have a specific department for online media like we do for photography and design.

Interest in photography continues to increase, with interest having more than doubled since 2007 and quadrupled since 2006. Wolf TV also saw a nice increase, from 64 interested students to 101. WKNC represented the largest interest group in 2010, with 182 students indicating a desire to learn more about the student radio station. WKNC had a presence at 14 of the 19 new and transfer student information fairs and Cates Crawl, which likely contributed to the increased student interest. The remaining media remained relatively consistent with their interest numbers.

Interest by Media 2006-2010

Media	2010	2009	2008	2007	2006
Agromeck	74	80	70	62	55
Business Office	46	42	54	9	N/R
Design	93	82	N/R	N/R	7
Nubian Message	44	33	50	22	18
Online Media	N/R	N/R	74	24	N/R
Photography	167	147	125	73	39
Technician	147	143	151	134	75
Windhover	51	63	36	46	26
WKNC	182	120	149	111	76
Wolf TV	101	64	N/R	N/R	N/R
	905	774	709	481	296

All duplicate individuals/contacts have been removed from these numbers.

CONTACT
After each session, Meredith Holliday from the Student Media Business Office or Jamie Lynn Gilbert compiled the list of interested students and sent them an initial welcome email. At the end of each week, the editor/manager received a list of the individuals who indicated they were interested in his or her medium. They were asked to email each student by the Monday following the recruitment week and copy orientation@sma.ncsu.edu on all emails.

To help prevent miscommunication as to what email addresses were being used and what was expected of each editor/manager, Gilbert emailed each student leader with a list of expectations before New Student Orientation began. She also included the link to the previous year’s recruitment report so leaders could see how the data was being used. To improve post-orientation contact, Gilbert sent reminder emails to editors/managers before the deadline. All but one editor contacted his list within the specified time period, which is a drastic increase from 25 percent and 49 percent of interested students being contacted for post-recruitment efforts in 2009 and 2008, respectively. This practice should continue in future years to ensure students, especially those who attend our open house, are being contacted by editors/managers.

OPEN HOUSE
The Student Media open house is a four-hour event set to coincide with Cates Crawl. “Previous” indicates the number of people who expressed an interest in that medium during New Student Orientation or Cates Crawl who then attended the open house. “New” represents those students who had not previously indicated interest in Student Media during the recruitment effort. Windhover is not included in these totals because the no one from that medium was present for the open house. It should also be noted that eight of the 14 open house attendees marked “new” for Agromeck had previously indicated interest in Student Media, just not Agromeck specifically.

Open House Attendance by Media 2010

Media	Total	Previous	New
Agromeck	15	1	14
Business Office	1	1	0
Design	7	6	1
Nubian Message	4	0	4
Photography	7	7	0
Technician	29	13	16
WKNC	31	19	12
Wolf TV	4	3	1
	98	50	48

Duplicate individuals are included in these numbers, as some students visited with multiple media during the open house.

WKNC TRAINING
WKNC again offered a class to train staff members and help them feel more comfortable on staff. The WKNC class is five weeks, consisting of 60 minutes of lecture and an hour of training in studio with a current WKNC DJ each week. To complete the class, the student must attend four of five sessions. Students must then pass a written exam and demonstrate proficiency on the station equipment before becoming eligible for a shift. The training class is required for anyone wishing to work as a DJ and a great emphasis is placed on the class from the adviser, general manager and program director.

More than 100 applications for the WKNC training class were distributed, with 77 students completing the application to be considered for the fall 2010 WKNC training class. That represents a 40 percent acceptance rate. Although this new application process began with the spring 2010 class, this was the first time the station received significantly more applications than available training spots.

Of the 31 people initially selected for the WKNC training class, 26 (84 percent) completed the training by attending 4 of 5 classes. One student was dropped after missing two classes and four others could either not attend the class meeting times or determined to not be in compliance with the Student Media academic progress policy. Twenty-two students (71 percent) passed the written and board tests to join the staff, and 20 (65 percent) had regular shifts or were otherwise active at the end of the fall semester. Thirteen (50 percent) of the 26 students who completed the training class were from one of our recruitment efforts.

Overall WKNC Training Comparisons – 2008-2010

	Started class	Completed class	Joined Staff	Still on staff
Fall 2010	31	26 (84%)	22 (71%)	22 (65%)
Summer 2010	16	14 (88%)	10 (63%)	10 (63%)
Spring 2010	23	22 (96%)	18 (78%)	17 (74%)
Fall 2009	31	27 (87%)	16 (52%)	15 (48%)
Summer 2009	21	16 (76%)	15 (71%)	7 (33%)
Spring 2009	25	23 (92%)	20 (80%)	10 (40%)
Fall 2008	30	27 (90%)	25 (75%)	6 (20%)

These numbers reflect all individuals, not just those recruited during New Student Orientation and Post-Orientation recruitment efforts.

JOINED STAFF
Of the people who expressed an interest during recruitment efforts, below are the numbers of people who actually joined the staff. The percentages are the percentages of people who expressed an interest in that medium who joined the staff. Student Media recruited 43 new staff members. Of the 21 students who joined Technician there were nine photographers, seven staff writers, three designers and two cartoonists.

New Staff Recruited by Media 2010

Media	Joined	Percent
Agromeck	9	12%
Business Office	1	2%
Nubian Message	1	2%
Technician*	21	8%
WKNC	11	6%
Wolf TV	0	0%

*Technician numbers include staff writers, photographers and designers. Technician percentage is out of the 276 individuals indicating interest in any of those categories.

STILL ON STAFF
Some people join the staff, but leave before the end of the fall semester. Below are the numbers of people who were still on staff as of December 2, 2010. The percentages are our “retention” figures, i.e. the percentage of people who joined the staff and remained on it. Student Media retained 40 individuals, up from 33 individuals in 2009. Student Media retained 40 students in 2008 and 44 in 2007.

New Staff Retained by Media 2010

Media	Still	Percent
Agromeck	7	78%
Business Office	0	0%
Nubian Message	1	100%
Technician	21	100%
WKNC	11	100%
WolfTV	0	N/A

New Staff Retained by Class 2007-2010

Class	2010	2009	2008	2007
Freshmen	31	28	26	31
Sophomore	6	1	8	9
Junior	2	2	1	1
Senior	0	0	1	3
Grad Student	1	2	4	0

New Staff Retained by College 2007-2010

College	2010	2009	2008	2007
CHASS	11	8	16	16
ENG	10	8	7	9
CALS	4	4	6	2
GRAD	1	2	4	0
COM	4	1	2	1
DESIGN	4	1	2	2
FYC	4	4	1	6
PAMS	0	1	0	3
TEX	1	4	1	3
TRANS	0	0	1	0
NRS	0	0	0	2
EDU	1	0	0	0

Twenty students recruited during our 2009 efforts are still on staff – 12 at Technician, seven at WKNC and one at Agromeck. At this time in 2009, Student Media had retained 13 students from its 2008 recruitment efforts. Only five of those students remain – three at WKNC, one at Nubian Message and one in the business office. Two of those students currently hold a top leadership position (Tommy Anderson at WKNC and Andrea Mason in the business office). Eight students recruited during our 2007 efforts remain on staff as well, although two have moved from their original medium.

MONIES SPENT

$739 for 5,000 fliers of which we have none left ($0.15/each)

ORIENTATION STAFFING

Each of the 19, 90 minute information sessions was staffed by two representatives of the Student Media. Total person hours committed during orientation were 57, down from 85.5 in 2009, 147.75 in 2008, 168.75 in 2007 and 236.25 in 2006.