PURPOSE
Focus of Internship: Market research, marketing strategy and operations.
This internship will focus on marketing strategy at Gazelle International to better understand and reach target market effectively with their training, consulting and assessment services around ‘CLICK’ virtual exchange tool. By clarifying the value of Gazelle's services, targeting their message and most likely clients, Gazelle hopes to create a sustainable revenue source and top-quality service for their growing client and partner network. As a nonprofit, their marketing efforts aim to both “sell” and “inform” clients, constituents and colleagues in the international higher education and virtual exchange arena. Gazelle's targeted niche has been community colleges, historically black and underserved colleges and other schools or professional fields, e.g. engineering, that typically do not have robust international education programs for their students. For example, of the 1050 community colleges in the US, less than 11% have a systematic internationalization program and roughly 1% of their students do a study abroad (compared to 11% of all US undergraduates.) VE/CLICK provides high quality low-cost alternative to education abroad for students and knock-on benefits for faculty development and institutional goals of retention, recruitment, graduation and workforce success. Institutional services provide the key to Gazelle's long term business model with individual teacher services as the “hook” into the institutions. Their brand “CLICK” has growing recognition in the virtual exchange, US community college and French IUT networks. They have developed a reasonable social media marketing and website presence along with conference presentations over the last two years and started using assessment results to communicate their value to the larger higher education community. However, they need a more systematic approach, in both market research and marketing, to convince a very tight higher education market of the value of their services. As the field of virtual exchange proliferates and atomizes into “anything can be virtual”, they need to clarify their niche and understand customers’ specific needs and challenges. Working with the Principal and Gazelle's small team, the intern will review current marketing efforts (social media, mailings, website, conferences) to develop and begin operationalizing a plan to streamline and strengthen them. The intern, similarly working with the team, will develop and implement a market research effort to help understand target market, primary institutional clients to specify Gazelle's comparative advantage with the main competitors and the main pain points and challenges of their institutional target market. Ideally, this internship would contribute toward creating a methodology that could be applied to different market segments, starting with community colleges in a particular region of the US and repeating/adapting it for other locations including in Europe, e.g. with our French technology institute partners or similar technically focused post-secondary institutions. Gazelle's current US clients are working with France, Mexico, Holland, the UK and Germany. The intern will also participate with the rest of the team in social media and marketing efforts including writing blog posts and other media items. They will contribute their knowledge and creative insights from their work with the larger team, clients and partner network. This internship will give students the chance to contribute meaningfully to the evolving goals and practices of Gazelle International and the larger virtual exchange community.
Professional development areas include:
- Learning to work in a virtual environment across countries
- Developing market research of use to the larger international higher education community
- Developing marketing strategies and tools of use to nonprofits and businesses serving the larger international higher education community
- Learning about the community college system in the US and university systems overseas
- Learning about how marketing research is used in higher education decision making and program development
CAREER DEVELOPMENT
This internship will prepare for careers in any of the following
- Consulting, and specifically education consulting
- Higher-Ed administration
- Entrepreneurship in non-profits
- Advocacy and Policy
- Communication, Outreach and Publishing
- Marketing
RESPONSIBILITIES
The Market Strategy intern at Gazelle International will assist the Principal in refining their target market and strengthening their marketing activities in order to serve more institutional clients effectively with knock-on benefits of reaching more teachers and students with high quality international education. The Market Strategy intern will be responsible for developing and documenting best practices, and exploring new ways of narrating the impact and effects of the CLICK system. As part of market research, the intern will also be expected (with the guidance of Principal) to familiarize themselves with the internationalization of HE literature and the virtual exchange bridge organizations like Gazelle International working to help HE institutions integrate this programming. They will work with the team and Principal to test the best ways to disseminate the CLICK story to target clients. The Market Strategy intern will work with the team to consult with faculty and partners on best practices, results and benefits that demonstrate the value of the VE/CLICK experience for campus leaders, teachers and students. To the extent the intern wishes, they would be welcome to join the team in presenting our results at conferences, webinars or other venues.
SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
This internship will provide experiences to develop and polish the following skills
- Communication to diverse audience
- Inter-disciplinary team collaboration
- Knowledge of sector and networking
- Marketing with social media
- Thought leadership and innovation
- Problem-solving and analytical
- Project management and leadership
- Working in a Virtual environment across countries
Gazelle provides a unique entrepreneurial environment and insider view of innovation in higher education as a start-up nonprofit that provides training and consulting services for international higher education with a cutting-edge approach in Virtual Exchange and targeting community colleges and under-served institutions.
The intern will receive direct mentoring and supervision from the sponsor, including initial training and orientation with regard to the mission of the organization and standards for communication, with the expectation of increasing autonomy as the internship progresses. As relevant, the intern may be offered the opportunity to attend and present work at professional conferences on international higher education and virtual exchange. As a largely virtual work arrangement, the normal means of communication will be via Zoom, WhatsApp, phone and email. Normally, the work will be conducted on a weekly basis with multi-week goals and weekly team meetings. If possible, the sponsor will travel to UVA to meet with the intern in person, provide orientation and begin developing the specific plans for the work as part of the Gazelle International team.
Prospective interns should have baseline experience in some of these areas and the motivation to develop professionally in each of them
- Good communication skills in writing and in person by phone or in virtual meetings.
- Prior experience in social media marketing in a professional or academic environment is preferred.
- Proficiency with social media.
- Familiarity with teaching and learning goals and assessment approaches and different higher education systems and cross-cultural differences around the world
- Interest in market research, market strategy or marketing in an international context or with educational services is encouraged.
- Experience managing initiatives in a professional environment or student organization is preferred.
- Cross-cultural and/or second language study-work experience helpful.
- Students with Education, Social Sciences or other Arts & Sciences training with interdisciplinary interests are encouraged to apply.
The internship will commence in Fall of 2021. Typical effort involved is 10 hours per week over 20 weeks. The intern will work remotely in Charlottesville with regular virtual check-ins with mentor.
The internship will be funded up to $5000 per semester, in wage replacement or augmenting other fellowship support.
INFORMATION SESSION
to learn more about the organization and specific internship opportunity, participate in information session with Founder of Gazelle, Nancy Ruther on February 16, Tuesday at 12 pm, .
Register to receive zoom link