Academic Marketing

In the halls of the University of Notre Dame, I see posters every day, plastered to the wall with the intention of convincing undergraduate students that a particular department has the right academic major or minor for them. The assumption is often that you have chosen your major. Either that or a minor in something you enjoy is likely to spark an interest in taking that subject on as a major. The point is, students are supposed to think about changing a big portion of their life, or at least their college career, based on the inspiring logic of a  catchy line on a poster.

The foreign language study posters are my favorite, but there are plenty of others. Some even advertise specific classes. So: "Confused about life?" is the header for a class called "Tolstoy (in English)" and a painting of Tolstoy is supposed to help with that. Is that what Tolstoy offers? Resolution to life's confusions? Not in my experience.

The French department offers: "Yes, French. C'est Chic!" Written on simple white paper, I suspect this is trying to appeal to some Apple-Mac-like simplicity of color motif.

But the best are from the Italian department. Last year one read, "Milton spoke Italian. Shouldn't you?" The logic escapes me. Another read, "Aristotle spoke Italian. Shouldn't you?" which is just plain false. But recently they've been updated. So, "Colin Firth speaks Italian. Shouldn't you?" At which point I could only think to myself, "If I ever run into Colin Firth, I doubt I'll be relying on Italian to communicate."

Good luck, Italian language department. I hope the black-and-white posters work for you.