September 2004
I hope you enjoy the story on the back cover about the Telly Finalist Award won by the “Wet Kiss” television ad created for Schreiner’s marketing campaign. This kind of promotion is important when you are determined to elevate name recognition, but one of the things we are reminding ourselves on campus is that marketing is much more than promotion. Award-winning advertising doesn’t mean much unless you can deliver on your promise — in our case, excellent teaching, an attractive environment, and real value for our students and their families. These thoughts have been on my mind lately with regard to location in particular. We are fortunate to be located in the Hill Country. But beyond that, we are blessed in being able to bring prospective students to a remarkable campus. Many people are responsible for that blessing.
They start with plant director Dale Myers, who has a real passion not only for how facilities operate, but also how a place looks. Summer is the season for special attention to those kinds of things, because the comparative emptiness of the campus allows the staff to make improvements indoors and out. For example, Darrell Jarvis and Wes Gardner completely repainted all apartments in three units at Pecan Grove, plus portions of other units—a massive undertaking. Another crew has repainted the Weir interior. Construction manager Milton Wilson and staff have ridden herd on the final stages of our Moody Science Building renovation and begun our much-needed maintenance facilities. Custodial crews have thoroughly cleaned all residence halls as summer camps made them available.
Meanwhile, outdoors, the grounds crew, under the leadership of James Whetstone, has teamed up with early summer rain to produce a campus we are proud to show to prospects. Deb Zugai and Bob Arnold have transformed a number of spaces on campus— around Weir, Logan Library and Moody Science—with their landscaping art. Sometimes we think of such improvements as cosmetic, but just as we want our homes to be attractive expressions of ourselves, so we do our university, which is the home for many of us for much of the year. I love to take a slow drive around campus early in the morning just to savor what these folks and all their colleagues have done to provide value to Schreiner students in shaping such a lovely place for learning. Here’s to those who make that tour so pleasant!
