Attracting Students to Local Contests

• Spoke at meeting for gifted program facilitators in my district. Gave information and flyers. Emailed reminders. Made it clear that I could be contacted for questions, etc.
• Contacted the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, an organization that serves schools in our county. Among other things, the AIU disseminates information about gifted opportunities.
• Sent announcements to larger listservs so that information about NACLO would have wider reach. More recently I sent Drago names and listserv contacts that are local, state, and national so that he could add them to an informational contacts list he has developed.
• Organized workshops at our school through Lori Levin, and notified other schools of the possiblities of arranging workshops.
• Within my school, made announcements both over PA system during regular daily informational announcements, placed announcements in a written daily bulletin that appears online and can be seen by parents as well as students, and handed out flyers.
• Made 1-minute classroom visits where I spoke to students about NACLO, handed out flyers, and encourage students to come speak to me. On my way from one class to aother, I also passed these flyers out in the halls when I saw students who I thought might be interested.
• Put flyers in all teachers' mailboxes and asked them to post them. Problems on the flyers helped to generate support and interest among both students and teachers.
• Placed posters for the ILO and/or NACLO in visible spots.
• Spoke about NACLO at parent information and/or school recruitment sessions.
• Put NACLO on a list of schools clubs and activities, with me as sponsor so that I could answer questions.

Contacting Schools

• Put out a small press release saying what the contest is about, when and where it will be, and whom to contact. Your university may have a publicity person who can help with this. Contact us if you need advice on the content of the press release.
• Find a network of teachers who can spread the word for you.
• See if anyone at your university already has contacts at high schools.
• If all else fails, call some schools ask to talk to a computer science teacher, math teacher, or language teacher.
  
• Make a flyer (There is a sample on the web site) and send it to your list of contacts. Ask the schools to post or circulate the flyers to students.
  

Arrange for training/practice sessions

• Make a list of students and faculty who are willing to be presenters at high schools.
• Make a powerpoint presentation and a handout of practice problems that all the presenters can use so they don't have to spend a lot of time preparing.
  Some samples are avaiable on the web site. However, since we cover some of the same schools each year, we like to change the presentation so that it will not be boring to students who have participated before. The undergraduates are also excited to tell high school students why it is fun to major in linguistics. The presentation should be something that you feel comfortable with, so feel free to make your own presentation and share it with the rest of us.
• Take requests from schools for presentations. We usually have two faculty and a student at each school presentation, but it can also be done by one person. We are flexible in adapting the presentation to the school's needs.
  Some schools are willing to take interested kids out of class for two periods and have them meet with us in the school library. Other schools prefer for all the kids to hear about the contest, and ask us to do a series of one-period presentations in several classes.
• You can also schedule practice sessions at your university in the evening or on a weekend if you don't want to visit schools.

Find Resources

• Find out what resources your university has: For example, CMU has a center for community outreach that has a van that can be used for community outreach activities (like visiting schools) and small souvenirs(pens, notebooks, etc.) with CMU logos.
• Hire undergraduate students: If you have a grant from NSF, you can request a supplement for $6K to hire an undergraduate assistant. If the students are eligible for federal work study, you can stretch the money farther. For example, at CMU, work study pays three quarters of the student's salary and the REU supplement only has to pay one quarter of the student's salary. We can send you a sample REU proposal.

Fundraising

• The first place to look is your own department. Then check whether your university has money for community outreach activities or educational activities for high school students.
• You can also ask local restaurants or food stores to donate food.
• In Pittsburgh, we also asked local NLP companies to support the contest. We listed them on the web site as sponsors and we plan to give them "NACLO Sponsor" plaques that they can display in their reception area. We also list their names in press releases.

At the Contest

• Make an information packet to hand out at the contest. The purpose of the contest is to increase participation in linguistics and language technologies, so it is good to tell participants how they can learn more. In Pittsburgh last year, we included the URLs for undergraduate majors and minors in linguistics, language technologies, and modern languages at Pitt and CMU. The LSA web site has a brochure called "Why major in Linguistics?" on their FAQs page.