Poor advertising leads to poor lecture attendance

By Staff Editorial     10/23/08 7:00pm

Who knew that an interesting lecture series was hosting ethnically diverse speakers on campus? Answer: Apparently, not enough people. Last Wednesday, renowned physicist Sylvester James Gates spoke at Rice as a part of the President's Lecture Series of Diverse Scholars. The Diverse Scholars lecture series, which started five years ago, differed from the regular President's Lecture Series in that it held a specific emphasis on inviting minority scholars to speak on campus. However, its short-lived life has come to an end (See story, page 1).

Computational and Applied Mathematics Professor Richard Tapia, creator of the Diverse Scholars lecture series, said he terminated the series because of low attendance and said he thinks more students would attend if the speaker were a household name.

While legendary scholars are certainly more likely to draw bigger audiences, we feel that the relative obscurity of the lecture series speakers is less of a fundamental problem than the lack of advertising for their talks. Nobody can attend a lecture if he does not know about it, whatever he thinks about the scholar. Tapia said that he thought the low attendance signaled that students weren't interested in the lectures presented, but, once again, how can we judge student interest in a lecture series if the lectures are unknown to the undergraduate population?

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CAAM graduate student Josef Sifuenties, who helps Tapia with the lecture series, advertised heavily for Gates' lecture and saw the results: a large student turnout. Sifuentes said he spoke with specific minority groups to draw their interest, which is a much more direct approach than simply placing flyers at specific campus locations. This sort of active approach to advertising always draws more students than any passive method could, and we believe that it could be successfully implemented full time if the Series of Diverse Scholars were ever reestablished.

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