Rough Cut
Student Success Tools · Case study
Recruitment outreach for all four digital media programs, designed end to end with AI and aimed by AI research at the specific teachers and advisors who already have our future students in their classrooms.
Goal
Reach future students before for-profit and private colleges, which recruit early, lock them in. The newsletter and its contact list put a public option in front of students and counselors first.
Audience
Regional high school students, and the specific adults who already have those students in front of them, not the front office: CTE instructors and advisors, art teachers, photography teachers, audio and video instructors, yearbook advisors, gaming clubs, and counselors. A counselor forwards a newsletter. A yearbook advisor hands it to the kid who shoots every football game.
Process
The whole thing was built with AI on purpose, to learn from experience rather than opinion how far a model can be pushed on a real design problem with a real deadline. The format, the header, the icons, the whole visual system came out of that process, none of it drawn by hand. It was harder than doing it manually: directing a model to a specific visual outcome is its own skill.
The harder half was the targeting, and it is where AI earned its place. The result is a contact list built around who actually teaches our future students, and it is the engine the newsletter runs on. We did not have deep ties to most of these schools, so this list is the starting point, and it grows and gets corrected every time we reach a school.
The newsletter is the recurring touchpoint that list carries, backed by a visit form for schools and students who want to come see the studios in person.
Technology
- Runs on Google Apps Script and a Google Sheet.
Outcomes
In progress. A named contact list of more than 200 instructors, advisors and counselors across 50 regional feeder high schools, a full recruitment visual system, and a working visit form are ready, and the first issue has not been sent yet. The goal is a quarterly newsletter.
The college’s bulk email platform only sends to people who have opted in, so a researched list cannot be mailed in bulk. The first issue goes out through individual outreach, school by school, which is also how the relationships get built. A different sending tool is the other route.