Best of CASE District III Award
 

Institution: The University of Alabama

Title of entry: Roll Tide from Space

About this entry: The University first highlighted UA alumnus and NASA astronaut Bob Hines’ story in 2017 when he was selected as an astronaut candidate. From that story, the University community’s obsession with space has skyrocketed. Through our research of media interest in NASA, NASA’s social media which boasts over 60M followers, popularity of SpaceX space exploration programs, and analytics of UA stories and social media stories revolving around the College of Engineering Aerospace and UA Space programs, we knew interest for this story would captivate many — and it did.

The Division of Strategic Communications was not only innovative in the ways we added audio, digital and video components to tell Hines’ story, but we also were able to expand our work collaboratively with various UA divisions, departments and NASA to truly make Hines' story come to life dynamically and with the championship spirit of the University. We accomplished assets to support the campaign with no increased budget or cost to UA’s Division of Strategic Communications. Through formal and informal research methods, we were able to determine the interest for continued stories related to alumni, UA College of Engineering Aerospace and UA Space programs. We pulled analytics from the previous articles, media coverage, and UA enrollment reports to gauge interest in Hines’ story. In fact, the UA Aerospace program has seen an increase of fall enrollment from 560 students in fall 2017 to 639 students in fall 2022.