Academic inspiration from the E! network

Today I caught up with a colleague at another nearby(ish) liberal arts college. He complained about how hard it was to recruit majors into his non-STEM field because "all the incoming students want to be pre-med." I countered that students don't have to be a science major to apply to medical school. Students do have to take a lot of science classes to meet the med school prereqs, but having a history, english, or even philosophy degree will not hurt a student's chance at admission (but a crappy GPA or low MCAT scores certainly would)! My colleague was still at a loss as to how to advertise his field to pre-frosh.

This evening I was watching the season premiere of Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami. (Don't judge too harshly; N.A. is off on a trip for essentially the rest of the month + July). One of the Kardashian sisters decided to take to the beach to advertise her boutique, handing out flashy cards as promotion.

I think some branches of academia might benefit from a similar approach.

Now I'm not suggesting that, as in the KaKTM episode, that my humanities and social science colleagues pose naked in body paint spelling out their respective fields (see below). ..or would that be more catchy than a flyer detailing the many benefits of an art degree?





But...do you really want to see your colleagues like this?