Tim Rausch
Students in a Hull College of Business marketing class this spring assisted a non-profit program that helps those afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease.
The Jud C. Hickey Center on Central Avenue in Augusta now has a digital marketing gameplan thanks to the effort of students in the Introduction to Digital Marketing course.
One of the center’s directors, Fred Palmer, approached Hull’s dean, Dr. Richard Franza, prior to the start of spring semester for assistance. Staff from the center visited the classroom and made a presentation to students in January.
The course’s professor, Dr. Manisha Mathur, said the students were tasked with making an assessment of the center’s digital marketing and making recommendations to help the non-profit organization.
The center needed to create awareness, recruit more volunteers and receive more monetary contributions.
Mathur said the center had limited marketing and relied mostly on word-of-mouth and its website to reach its audience.
The Jud C. Hickey Center is an Alzheimer’s specific day program located in the CSRA, which was founded in 1986 as an in-home respite program. The organization grew to open a day center in 1989 and moved into its current location in 1996.
“I found this to be a perfect opportunity for my students to have hands-on experience,” Mathur said. The project to help the Hickey Center was part of the students’ grade for the class.
Recommendations included improving its web site with dedicated landing pages, bolstering its social media presence, and optimizing its Google search position.
“They made some excellent recommendations and I am very proud of that. However, due to the sudden move to online instruction, students were not able to present, in person, their findings to the executives from the Jud C. Hickey Center,” Mathur said.
Mathur continued to guide, motivate, and encourage students throughout the process despite the pandemic situation.
Through a virtual meeting with executives, Mathur was able to present the students’ findings and recommendations at the end of May. She said the executives were excited about the suggestions and plan to implement them.
The partnership might turn into internships for some Hull students.
Jud C. Hickey was the founding dean of the School of Dentistry at the Medical College of Georgia and was the interim president of the Medical College of Georgia from 1987-1988. He was a client when the center opened in 1996 and it was named in his honor. Dr. Hickey died in 2005, at the age of 78, following a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
