Haley White

April 28, 2017

UNC Summer School administers UNC-Chapel Hill courses taught in summer in Academic

Affairs. It ensures the best possible summer educational opportunities at Carolina for UNC-CH

students as well as for visiting students. The main goal of Summer School is to encourage, motivate

and support Academic Affairs units in offering summer courses that allow UNC-CH students to

make progress toward degrees and that attract summer visiting students. They also host academic

initiatives to engage students outside of the classroom. Summer Schools values are to be

collaborative, accessible, inclusive, innovative and interdisciplinary.

About 45 departments or curricula of the College of Arts and Sciences and six professional

schools in Academic Affairs offer a diverse array of summer classes. Field courses, research courses,

and graduate-level labs are also offered. More than 550 undergraduate class sections include

hundreds of courses that meet General Education perspectives and other academic requirements.

More than 90 percent of the instructors are the same faculty and graduate students who make

Carolina one of the top public universities in the U.S. Summer instructors include some selected

visiting faculty.

Generally small class sizes in summer and fewer students on campus contribute to a small-

college atmosphere. The student population in summer is as diverse as in the academic year and

includes a cohort of visiting students from other college campuses and high schools.

Jan Yopp, dean of UNC Summer School, has created an environment that allows for the

development of programs such as the UNC Summer Jazz Festival. Launched in summer 2011 under

the direction of Associate Professor Steve Anderson, UNC Summer Jazz Program has become the

model program for combining academic credit and community involvement. It has national
recognition after just three years and brought more than 120 people to campus in 2016 to

participate. Using the same model, a high school sports writing program is offered in conjunction

with a sports writing course in the School of Media and Journalism. Forty students participate in the

high school program.

Summer Schools main forms of communication are its website, its Instagram and Twitter

accounts, and its constant contact with The Daily Tar Heel and University Gazette. Summer School

has established a presence on Twitter and continues to hold marketing events that result in gaining

followers on both Twitter and Instagram. They also create word-of-mouth communication through

their marketing events such as t-shirt giveaways.

UNC Summer School is directly funded by the university itself.

Strengths:

The UNC Summer School website offers a vast amount of information, making it possible
for all audiences to obtain the information they are looking for and answer questions that
may come up during their time on the site.

UNC Summer School already has developed credibility and trust as an organization because
it is a department within the university.

UNC Summer School offers a fair price when compared to competitors in the Triangle area.

The homepage is somewhat interactive, presenting a slideshow with photos and captions
that encourage viewers to click and learn more.

The website allows users to access other UNC-CH websites such as ConnectCarolina, Maps
and Departments.

Weaknesses:

The information organization is cluttered. There are so many different tabs and links that is
could be overwhelming.

The layout of the information on the websites homepage is not visually appealing.

There is no Facebook page to allow for the creation of event promotion or advertisement.

The website does not utilize the social media tool, allowing you to incorporate social media
pages directly on the website.
 The course offerings for high school students are not detailed.

The Instagram account lacks professionalism. The photos tend to be low-quality and
therefore do not attract the same traffic that a high-quality photo would.

Opportunities:

The website designer can create a social media page on the UNC Summer School website
that uses HTML/CSS to merge their Twitter and Instagram links within the website.

A large portion of students at UNC take classes through either the Maymester program or a
summer session, yet there arent any of those voices reflected on the social media accounts.
Hearing the benefits of taking a course through UNC Summer School from other students is
a great way to build a positive image and reputation with the student body.

The website should have one standard font to make it look more professional.

Provide detailed course offerings for high school students.

NC State Universitys website offers a search engine directly in the website, allowing
students to search classes to fir their schedule based on time, day and type of class.

The Instagram account needs to be run by a student who knows how to use social media
and create a page that will be visually appealing to current and potential students.

Threats:

The lack of branding consistency throughout the website can threaten the legitimacy of
UNC Summer School as a department.

The layout of the website can be overwhelming to first-time visitors. There are too many
options to select from, potentially causing someone to give up on pursuing classes at
summer school.

The inability to plan an individual schedule on the UNC Summer School website makes the
website less competitive with schools like NC State University.

Lack of branding consistency throughout the website can threaten the legitimacy of UNC
Summer School as a department. This is easily avoidable thanks to UNC branding resources
available online.

UNC Summer School provides a wonderful resource for students to enroll in summer courses

to meet their academic requirements, to graduate on time and to take classes for personal

enrichment. However, Summer School needs to improve its utilization of social media in order to
gain a larger following from both UNC-CH students and potential Summer School students.

Summer School has identified their target audience, but they need to do a better job in going about

reaching that audience. For example, Instagram is a social media platform that is widely used by

young adults and high schoolers. Creating a platform for UNC Summer School on Instagram is an

ideal way to gain traction for Summer School classes and events that are put on during the summer.

Unfortunately, the UNC Summer School account looks very unprofessional. Pictures that are posted

on the account are blurry and a lot of photos are cropped strangely. As strange as this weakness

sounds, people do not like to follow Instagram accounts where pictures are blurry and everything

looks unprofessional. The accounts with the most traction are the ones that post colorful, vibrant,

high-quality photos, such as the @UNCChapelHill Instagram account. If UNC Summer School

hires a social media intern who has a background in photography and videography, there is a high

chance that their Instagram account will gain traction among students at UNC-CH, and a flow-in of

word-of-mouth communication among students and faculty with the social media application.

Furthermore, though YouTube is presented on the organizations website as if it is frequently used,

there are only a handful of videos that are available for viewing. Again, UNC Summer School needs

to hire a social media intern with videography experience who can create visually-pleasing videos.

The YouTube channel is an excellent way to display representations of classes and to give people a

better understanding of what UNC Summer School is.

Facebook is an especially useful tool when it comes to planning and promoting events for

UNC Summer School. The organization does a great job of promoting Summer School during the

event, but the issue at hand is getting people to come to the event. However, they do not have a

Facebook page that people can use to check up on the events, and their dates and times all in one

place. This particular social media platform provides a more efficient way of describing events and

promoting said events. Once a person sees the event, they are able to share is on their timeline or
they are able to simply reply that they are interested or attending and the event link will

automatically appear on their Facebook timeline. This directly impacts the flow of information from

one person to another in and around the UNC-CH community. With all of the groups on Facebook

that are used by UNC-CH students, it would be difficult to miss a notification of an event. By

creating a Facebook page to promote and advertise UNC Summer School events such as the

Summer School t-shirt giveaway and the towel giveaway at the varsity baseball game more people

will be aware of the event and more people will show up.

Another significant issue that the website has is its visual presentation and organization. On

the homepage of the organizations website, there is a photo slide show with captions on the photos.

The captions are written in an odd, thin font. Instead, the website should have a font that matches

the theme of the website and that looks more professional. The font should be bold and all in a

color that is consistent throughout the slide show. In terms of its organization, the website needs to

be simplified. There are too many tabs, creating clutter and potential confusion among website

visitors. The course offerings for high school students, specifically, are not detailed. Although the

students can access this information on another part of the site or on another UNC website, it

would make it much easier for high school students who are not familiar with finding class

descriptions to simply put those descriptions on the page that is specifically made for them.