Will That Work?

Brochures are used to persuade people each and every day. They range from colorful to colorless, broad to specific, and interesting to boring. After browsing through about ten web pages dealing with "excellenet biological science departments", I stumbled across Arizona State University. Not only do they have an arts and sciences department, they also divide it into 3 more departments: College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, and School of Letters and Sciences. Also, the web site talks about the faculty members there who have made a major impact in the biology world. These impacts include a Nobel Laureate winner, Pulitzer Prize winner, and some NSF Early Career awardees. This website can be viewed at http://artsandsciences.asu.edu/. It lists many different quotes from famous philosophers and bright pictures. One example is "Out of intense complexities intense simplicities emerge" -Winston Churchill. In my opinion, this is a major strength of this website. It also describes numerous organizations on campus that I could possibly get involved in if I was to choose this school. Clearly, one can tell that the intended audience is prospective students and undecided majors. In addition, it describes the work environment and career fields. On the other hand, one of the worst online web pages that I found dealing with "excellent biological sciene departments" was the University of Nebraska Kearney. This web page was only one page in length and included only a small amount of pictures. Therefore, it is safe to say that this web page was boring and that I feel that they do a poor job in recruiting people to their program. This may account for the school being really small and not targeting a large amount of prospective students. This web page can be found at http://www.unk.edu/nss/biology.aspx?id=1224. In my opinion, this web page absolutely failed at its attempt to persuade people to attend or better yet, even visit the University of Nebraska Kearney's campus. They did not effectively use the online resource available and decided to be broad and boring instead of specific and interesting.
After viewing both a good and a bad example of a online web brochure, I have thought of a good way to create mine. I will be writing a brochure about the biological sciences program at the University of Southern Mississippi. My purpose will be to persuade them that it is an excellent program and that they should attend school here. I desire that they look further into it, maybe schedule a visit, and ultimately, choose USM as their place of study. My targeted (primary) readers are prospective students and undecided majors.  The key questions my reader will ask is: "Why should I choose this place?", "What networking opportunities can I gain from this?", and "What would my salary be?" My reader will use the information I provided to take USM as a consideration for attendance and to schedule a potential campus visit. I would like for my intended audience to have a passionate attitude toward biology just as I do. As for as their attitude towards me, I would like for my audiene to view me as an intelligent lady who knows what she is talking about and who has a bright future ahead of her.