Marketing the Physics Major

People who love science are not always passionate about marketing and publicity. Even so, many academic scientists are being presented with some responsibility for keeping student enrollments at a sustainable level. It used to be that a physics department could depend on growth in overall university applications to maintain a moderate upward trend in the major. The faculty could stay in the research lab and classroom, and not worry about how many students were majoring in physics. Oh, but times have changed. Enrollments are on the decline across the country, and universities are spending more time and money on acquiring new students; those efforts are increasingly involving department personnel. This workshop will focus on ways that physics faculty and administrators can be involved in marketing their program to help increase enrollments in the major.