Rough Cut

What it is

Rough Cut is an outreach newsletter from the Media Arts programs at Glendale Community College, sent to regional feeder high schools. It sits on top of a research spreadsheet that gathers contacts across 36+ regional schools: art teachers, yearbook advisors, CTE coordinators, and counselors. Each issue carries program updates, student award winners, faculty and alumni spotlights, and reasons to come visit.

Who it’s for

Regional high school students and the counselors who guide them. It is written to reach prospective students where they already are, in their high schools, well before they start choosing a college.

The goal

Reach future students before for-profit and private colleges lock them in. Those colleges recruit early, so the newsletter and its contact list exist to put a public option in front of students and counselors first. It is part of the program’s recruitment and pipeline work.

How it works

The research spreadsheet is the engine: it maps the feeder schools and the right people to reach at each one. The newsletter is the recurring touchpoint that outreach list carries, twice a year, backed by a visit form for schools and students who want to come see the studios in person.

The contact list

The heart of Rough Cut is the contact list behind it: more than 200 people across three dozen regional high schools, the art and media teachers, yearbook advisors, CTE coordinators, and counselors who actually talk to students about where to go next. We did not have deep ties to most of these schools, so this list is the starting point, the foundation we are building those relationships from. It is a living document, not a finished one. It grows and gets corrected every time we reach a school, and each issue of the newsletter is a reason to add the next name.