PF/PCA Education

The most important asset to manage, design, and produce prior to every semester for both The Pittsburgh Filmmakers School and The PCA School were the course catalogs. Historically PF/PCA produced separate catalogs by school each season. But the then-CEO and I decided early on in my tenure that a combined catalog for Spring 2018 (January - May 2018) would ultimately be more beneficial. Marketing partnered with the educational department of both schools headed by John Cantine, the Director of the Pittsburgh Filmmakers School, and Kyle Houser, Studio Arts Program Manager, to produce a dual-sided catalog that debuted a brand new, vibrant style guide that I developed. We also tagged in Dory Perry, the PF/PCA Registrar, to ensure the required language for accreditation was adhered to. And I worked side-by-side with PF/PCA's printer and longtime distributor to revise the delivery list and route for the catalogs, including the addition of multiple new locations that I felt would be beneficial to visibility and ultimately translate to higher enrollment numbers.

The Spring 2018 catalog marked several firsts, including: the first catalog to contain letters from the Directors of each school to welcome new and returning students; the first catalog to contain photography work from PF alumni; the first larger-format catalog (previous catalogs were produced at 5" x 7", this one was 8.5" x 11"), the first to closer adhere to the way other colleges structure their semesters (previous catalogs were divided into Winter and Spring); and the first to be embedded on the PF/PCA website, which allowed prospective students to digitally "flip through" the pages and click through to the registration link for each course.

View the PCA-side of the Spring 2018 catalog | View PF-side of the Spring 2018 catalog

I partnered with Joe Bisciotti, PF Education Department Assistant, and Dory Perry, the aforementioned Registrar, to produce dual-sided handouts, prior to the catalog's printing, to entice potential students during open houses and college fairs scheduled throughout the fall of 2017. These open houses were advertised with promoted posts on social media and physical ads in university newspapers (see below).

We placed ads in the University of Pittsburgh's Pitt News and The Tartan, Carnegie Mellon University's campus paper to promote the PF open house and to alert students that new courses were now online and available for registration. After every weekly enrollment report, Marketing additionally pushed individual courses that had lower enrollment numbers, which was occasionally necessary for new and more experimental courses.

PF/PCA's Flight School Fellowship (FSF) is an opportunity for artists in the Pittsburgh region to form a fellowship with peers and advance their careers in a way that sustains and expands financial and strategic goals, while keeping their artwork as the central feature. Headed by Artist Services Manager Kelly Bogel-Stokes, the primary marketing need for FSF was promotion of the final presentation night, where the 15-member cohort offered presentations of their work and development through the eight-week program at City of Asylum. I was on-hand that evening to photograph the proceedings for posterity and assets for usage during the next FSF application period.

The PCA School offered several 21+ evening workshops throughout the year, including Shrooms & Brews in partnership with Penn Brewery. Led by artist and PCA ceramics instructor Kara Zupancic, participants spent the evening creating Zupancic's signature mushroom sculptures and enjoying local brew provided by the brewery. Marketing created all promotional assets for the sold-out workshop and hired a photographer to capture all of the fun and creativity throughout the evening.