Week+Two+5366

=**Branding and the Golden Ratio**=


 * Branding Yourself and Your Classroom**

I think the whole concept of using branding in the classroom is a truly effective idea. Our church has a brand, logo, and church values which are included on printed publications, but after reading the lecture, I can see there is a need to increase the repetition of the brand. Also, smaller groups within the church have individual group names which uniquely identify them. This allows them to feel connected and creates a sense of family on a smaller scale.

The program where I work has a mission/ purpose statement which could be summed up in one primary goal: retention. The students come to the advisors and staff as resource people. We provide information, counsel, advice, referrals, tutoring, mentoring, motivation, encouragement, tools for success, etc. Much like a teacher! Our job is to serve as a role-model and to provide support to assist students in reaching their academic goals. Although, negative results can occur if the student perceives the help and support to be either too intrusive or not in their own best interest. At one time the brand / logo for the program was a life preserver, but it has since been discarded because it appeared to communicate that students needed to be rescued. We aim to offer support but not to the extent that we enable them.

One idea we have recently implemented is contacting the students on their birthdays. When we contact them, we purposely do not talk about their grades or any issues they may be having. We are constantly trying to find new ways to celebrate their successes and keep them focused on their goals. We also do annual student surveys to get feedback and learn how effective we are in serving our students. I feel that there are many ways that I could personally improve in this area. Although, our staff works very hard to market our services to program participants, I plan to do further research to personally brand myself and my services in a way that will relate to the overall purpose in serving them. Having a personal brand can serve as a way to teach my students the value and importance of staying in college and completing their degree.

We really don't have a logo currently. The concept or idea is support. We are one of several federal programs called TRiO and our branch is called Student Support Services. We serve college students through the undergrad level. Our church is small and doesn't have money for huge campaigns either but I think that is where we have to become more creative in the ways that we get our message across to those we are trying to serve.

I work in an educational setting, but our mindset is that we exist to provide a myriad of services to our students. Because we are a grant funded program we must show evidence that we are providing services to our participants. Every contact we have with a student counts toward our performance goals. Every student that drops out of school keeps us from reaching our goals. When it comes time to write for another grant, the results of our ongoing efforts will show whether or not we have been doing what we agreed to do. It could mean the difference in whether or not the program is allowed to continue. For this reason, an annual "customer satisfaction" survey of our students provides us with evidence to support continuing to do what we are doing or indicates that changes are needed. Feedback from the students is critical to what we do. In this way, the needs of the students determines the direction and future of our program.

Tonya, I must have missed this post earlier in the week. But after reading all our discussions this week, your post expressed my thoughts exactly. Whether we realize it or not, we all have branded ourselves in one way or another. Maybe we have never taken the time to consider what it is that we are really trying to communicate or sell to our students.

I created a personal mission statement at one time which has since been lost thanks to Hurricane Ike. I had spent a great deal of time working on it and thinking about the character qualities and values which I felt were most important in life. A few of the character qualities that I admire and value the most are: having a sense of purpose, respect for self and others, authenticity, integrity, service to others, and a desire for excellence.
 * Personal Mission Statement**

My personal mission statement would be to assist students in discovering their purpose in life, creating a sense of respect for self and others, encouraging a desire for excellence in all they do, modeling a life of authenticity and integrity, and enabling them to find a place in the world where they can be of service to others.

Translating these qualities into a brand or logo is a little more difficult than writing the mission statement. I suppose if I were to create a logo it be in the design of a lighthouse. A lighthouse is a beacon and it's something people who are lost can look towards for guidance. It's a big, tall, solid, unmoving structure. It also has powerful light which moves. So a lighthouse stands as both a symbol of stability and of change. As an advisor of students I am like a lighthouse in that I offer consistency, stability, and guidance to the students. But I also must be willing to change and adapt my methods in order to effectively meet their needs.

The lighthouse design would have the phrase “Live Life on Purpose”. I feel that if you can first discover what your purpose is in life, then you can have a greater respect for yourself and others, which will enable you to live your life authentically and with integrity. Having a sense of purpose in life is the first step in setting goals for yourself. Simply having a goal without fully understanding your purpose leads to disappointment. You may reach the goal but find there is no sense of satisfaction. Just as a lighthouse has a purpose, students should be taught to live their lives with a true sense of purpose in order to find satisfaction in achieving their goals.

I think a mission statement is intended to capture the overall vision of an organization, but I agree that it should be able to be condensed into as few words as possible. It also has to be memorable in order to be simply translated into action on the part of those who are entrusted with carrying out its goals. Matthew, I liked your explanation of what your mission statement means to you.

I totally agree with life being about making choices. So many of the college students I see are full of excuses and are not willing to own the poor choices they have made and continue to make. Teaching a child that the choices they make now will have a direct effect on their future is so important. It teaches them personal accountability which is something that is lacking in the world we live in today.


 * Our Concepts of Beauty**

I found it interesting that the Bible says that "the beauty of old men is the gray head." Proverbs 20:29. In my opinion, our culture today has created a false concept of what real beauty is based on a combination of body parts, the perfect eyes, the perfect hair, the perfect body, etc. It has taken what is "average" and put make-up on it and made it glamorous and then called it beautiful. The media has promoted this concept by digitally enhancing what we see in magazines, on television, and in advertisements. An example of this is in the picture of Reese Witherspoon in the Sweet Home Alabama movie poster that we studied. Her head was placed on someone else's body, so what we ended up with was a "new and improved" version of Reese. Most of us, if we saw a celebrity up close, would probably never recognize them without the make-up and camera angles.

If beauty is related to proportion, who decides what is beautiful? Is it consumers? The perfect body image for a female model today is quite different from the days when my mother was a young woman in the 40's. And who remembers Twiggy? She was the popular anorexic-looking model of the 60's. I think our views of what is beautiful changes almost like the fashion industry or a fad. This goes back to what we learned in lecture 1.3: How we see the world around us changes over time and our culture shapes the way we see things. If culture changes how we see things, then it certainly must change how we perceive beauty. But, in my opinion, inner beauty is something that remains constant over time. Someone who has a smile on their face, makes good eye contact, is well-mannered, genuine, personable, kind, compassionate, loving, caring, etc., exhibits qualities of beauty that never change.

I have a 22 yr. old daughter who friends tell me is beautiful. Of course, my views are prejudiced by the fact that she is my daughter, but when enough people tell you time and again, you tend to believe them. She has lots of friends, guys and girls, but very rarely gets asked out on a date and has never dated any one person steadily. What has been her experience is that guys appear to be intimidated by her appearance and are afraid to ask her out. They automatically decide that someone who is attractive would never agree to date someone of average physical qualities.

I saw a woman yesterday in the grocery store who had a great figure with a guy who appeared quite out of shape and my immediate thought was "Is that her husband? They don't look like they belong together." I made an immediate judgment without even knowing anything about them. The point I am trying to make is that people who are attractive can have just as hard a time with people making judgments about their appearance as someone who is not at all attractive according to the standards of the culture we live in today.

This question was asked on Yahoo! Answers, "Is beauty determined by the media, culture or science?" The general consensus of answers by individuals was that the media and culture determine what is considered beautiful. What we have been considering with the Golden Ratio and the Beauty Secret project is whether beauty could be determined by mathematical equations or science. Most of us probably never considered that symmetry and proportion may have had an affect on what we perceived to be beautiful. I think as indicated by the answers above that the majority of people feel that outward beauty is determined by the culture in which we live and the media reflects these ideas. In turn, the media also greatly impacts the ideas and concepts that are accepted by the culture in which we live.

Here's an example of what I am trying to explain. The fashion industry looks at what will people like and would be willing to purchase. Then they take that to the extreme and come up with something radically new. They put something out on the runway that is a real stretch for our imagination, outside of our comfort zone, and it causes us to think outside the box. Then what they actually put in the stores is more of a tame or watered down version of the original design. The fashion designers know that we wouldn't buy or wear the runway outfit, but they have changed what appeals to the consumer by causing them to buy into a new concept in fashion. So in this way the culture we live in has an affect on the media and the media reflects and changes the culture.

One final note on this subject: Years ago, if you saw a person with a tatoo, you knew they had either been in the military, in prison, or worked in a circus. But today tatoos, body art and body piercing are widely accepted by many people. This is another example of how our culture is constantly changing.

When I measured the dimensions of my face using the Golden Ratio formula, I found that my face is wider than average (1.4) and the length of my face is less than average (1.7). (Based on my calculations, I found that the larger the denominator in the equation, the greater than average the part being measured. And the smaller the denominator would equal less than average. ) My face is somewhat of an oval shape with my jaw line about the same width as my temples. My eyes lie along the visual vectors according to the Rule of Thirds.
 * The Golden Ratio and Rule of Thirds**

I have never claimed to be great in math, but I thought that the greater the ratio result (based on the smaller the denominator number) would translate that the feature is less than average. For example, if my face was 7 inches by 5 inches that equals 1.4. But if the width of my face was 4 inches, then that would equal 1.75. So wouldn't 5 inches be greater than average and 4 inches would be less than average? Help me out, I am confused. I am not trying to say that anyone is less or greater than average. I am just trying to check my math to see if I am figuring correctly.

Did anyone else go to the golden number website that was suggested in lecture 2.2 ? http://goldnennumber.net

I enjoyed what I found there, especially when I navigated to Meet the Phi Guy and read about the man who created the site. He listed 3 other sites that he also developed with similar goals and my favorite was Snapshots of God.