Underwood-Smith Teaching Scholars Program Development, Promotion, and Launch

Background

The West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission (HEPC) partnered with 84 Agency to assist with the development, promotion, and launch of the Underwood-Smith Teaching Scholars (USTS) program. This program recruits high school students who commit to serving West Virginia as a teacher after college graduation. Selected Scholars receive financial support, professional development through mentorship opportunities, and a sense of community through the creation of a cohort of like-minded peers.

HEPC intended on launching this program at a high profile in-person event at the West Virginia Governor’s Mansion at which USTS recipients and their families would be formally recognized by the program and be able to make deep connections with their assigned program mentors. HEPC was committed to fostering a sense of connection and community among the Scholars because programmatic success depends on the participants interest in the program lasting throughout their four year college experience and ultimately placing them in a teaching position in a West Virginia school system.

When in-person gatherings were rendered suddenly unsafe during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, organizations everywhere found themselves thrust into a relatively uncharted space. Instead of canceling the launch and delaying the program, HEPC turned to 84 Agency as a creative partner to transition the scope of work into a safe, virtual experience that would accomplish the same degree of meaning and connection between the participating Scholars, their families, and program partners.

Accustomed to thinking outside of the box, innovating within prescribed creative constraints, and executing with limited resources, 84 Agency partnered with HEPC not only to assist with this transition—to develop a memorable virtual ceremony recognizing the 2020 Scholarship recipients—but also to use the online experience to drive recruitment of the next class of Scholars, targeting recent high school graduates committed to pursuing careers in education.

Research

Due to the fact that in-person exposure was unsafe, any socially-distanced professional video production with each Scholar would have been very expensive given that they were located across the state. 84 Agency researched all materials available to HEPC, identifying creative opportunities to repurpose content from applications or opportunities to request user-generated content directly from Scholars. HEPC, as part of the USTS application, had required applicants to submit a video introducing themselves including an explanation as to why they were interested in the program, were invested in West Virginia, and had a passion for teaching.

To keep video production costs low, 84 Agency took on the challenge of creating cohesive creative materials from the diverse range of application materials available. This challenge was especially complex given that each applicant used what tools they had available to them (from smartphones to consumer-grade and professional-grade cameras) and each of them had their own visual aesthetic—ranging from low resolution, vertical selfie-style format to high definition, widescreen format, and varying from past tense to present tense.

Creative Approach

In collaboration with HEPC, 84 Agency determined early on in the transition of the project that video content would be a key component of both the recruitment campaign and recognition event. Therefore 84 Agency focused on a values-based creative approach, developing a campaign concept that got straight to the heart of the program’s core values: inspiration and connection. 84 Agency proposed to HEPC that the video content would center around the idea that most people have had at least one teacher who significantly impacted the trajectory of their lives—and that each participating Scholar in the USTS program had been inspired by one of those teachers to pursue a career in education.

84 Agency proposed the production of two videos to be premiered at the virtual event to emphasize inspiration and connection. The first video concept was a Scholar showcase, utilizing user-generated video content from every participating Scholars’ original application highlighting what inspired them about teaching. The second video concept was a collaborative media piece for which each Scholar was issued instructions to record themselves reading a single line from a poem about teaching that 84 Agency would edit together into one cohesive piece that would be revealed in a collective reading of the entire poem at the virtual event.

84 Agency proposed this creative approach and HEPC agreed that this approach would not only meet the goal of recognizing and celebrating each Scholar, but also work to promote the program and opportunity in order to attract the next group of applications. After receiving approval on this concept from HEPC, 84 Agency’s creative team developed a video script, produced a voiceover narration, and produced the video using clips from the Scholars’ application submissions.

Brand Expansion & Campaign Collateral

To succeed in a virtual environment, 84 Agency expanded the USTS program’s limited branding beyond the original logo and color palette. The first step was to create a cohesive visual language for the Scholarship program and the virtual event, which would also be used to inform the design of graphic elements for social media and a certificate/keepsake print that was distributed through the mail to the Scholars as a gift. The brand expansion used the logo to inspire patterns, virtual ZOOM backgrounds, digital graphics, and video elements.

84 Agency’s creative team then extended the theme from the videos to build out a social calendar for the month leading up to the event. The posts featured individual photos of the 2020 recipients along with the tagline from the video (“Be That Teacher”), graphics with quotes from the video narration, and text encouraging applications for the next round of Scholarships.

Virtual Event Design & Promotion

84 Agency supported HEPC in the planning and production of the virtual event that was facilitated on ZOOM and streamed to the public via Facebook Live. Following substantial research into various virtual conferencing technologies and contingency planning for potential internet and technology challenges, the creative team at 84 Agency devised a flexible and multi-faceted agenda to support different learning styles and enhance participants’ sense of connection to the program and each other. In partnership with HEPC, the creative team developed the event’s run of show and during the event itself, members of the 84 Agency team provided technical assistance behind the scenes to problem-solve as needed and ensure smooth-sailing for speakers and participants.

Impact

Ultimately—although the time and resources available to make the shift were limited—the transition of the in-person USTS program into a comparable virtual event was a success. Even as COVID-19 restrictions have lifted in the two years since, the event has remained virtual, and HEPC has continued to seek our support in their ongoing efforts to recruit and inspire the next generation of educators in the Mountain State.

HEPC has reported that all Scholars have continued to participate in USTS and fully intend on continuing to pursue teaching positions after their college graduation, and that each year they have received more applications than they anticipated and have received an increasingly higher quality pool of applicants. HEPC attributes the success of the program to the inspiring programmatic content and the sense of community and connection that is fostered among the Scholars despite being formed virtually.