Madera Community College wins grand prize in branding challenge

By Sharon Aschaiek | Sept. 21, 2022

We know that telling a powerful story is a key part of effective branding. A recruitment video by Madera Community College in California underscores this point by demonstrating the poignant journey of one of its graduates—and in the process, it has won a prestigious prize.

The college is the grand winner of The Million Dollar Community College Challenge by the Lumina Foundation, a higher education-focused organization in Indiana. The national initiative invited colleges to share how they would transform their brand-building and marketing efforts in order to be more inclusive of today’s students.

Madera was one of 10 finalist colleges that submitted a video expressing its brand promise and encouraging adult students to enrol. As the winner, the school has been awarded $1,000,000 to strengthen its marcomm approaches in order to enhance recruitment and retention and support student and community engagement.

“Winning this prize did a lot for us. Our community is abuzz about it, and we’re excited about the possibilities,” says Angel Reyna, president. “It’s helping us to be known better in the nation and generating more inquiries.”

The college’s winning two-minute video shares the personal journey of graduate Marisela Maciel, an immigrant and mother of three children who, as she explains in Spanish, started at Madera without knowing any English and with no financial stability in her life. The first person in her family to attend college, she enrolled in the school’s English as a Second Language program.

With the caring guidance of her teachers and counsellors and financial aid from the institution, she was able to complete her education and then find a job as an office assistant at the school. She is currently in the process of completing a bachelor’s degree in business at Fresno Pacific University in California. “Madera Community College has transformed my life and my family,”Maciel says, adding that the school “believed in me, and gave me the courage to believe in myself.”

As Reyna explains, Madera chose to highlight Maciel in the video because her story reflects the experiences of many of its 8,000 annual students. The school caters to many female (about two-thirds) Hispanic or Latinx (almost 70%) students who are adult learners (35% of its students are 25 and older) and are seeking competency-based training to supplement their prior work and lived experience that provides a bridge to a four-year degree.

With limited financial and human resources, the Lumina Foundation prize will enable Madera Community College to more effectively attract and serve its students. Reyna says the school will use the money for several initiatives, including updating its website to be more user-friendly; hiring consultants to advise on how to better support mature students; creating a campus mural with artwork that speaks to its Hispanic population; and building a multicultural centre for students to feel more welcome and connect with each other.

“If you’re a stranger in somebody’s home, you’re not going to feel as comfortable engaging, going to get something from the fridge. But if you’re a friend or a relative, you’re going to get up, go to the fridge. You might not even ask, right? You feel at home,” Reyna says. “That’s what we want our college to be. For people to just say, this is my college. I belong here.”