The Merrimack Brand

WHAT IS THE MERRIMACK BRAND?

Perhaps the best way to understand it is to get your reaction to a couple of words: Merrimack College.

What did those words say to you? What emotion did they elicit? What image or impression came to mind? Whatever it was, that is precisely the Merrimack brand – to you.

A brand is a powerful thing. It may or may not be reality. But it is your reality. It is what you see. It is what you think. It is what you feel.

Know Thyself

If you want others to know you, the first step in developing your brand is to know yourself. So when we began analyzing our own brand, we talked to those who knew us best. We talked with students, faculty and staff. We talked with alumni, parents and donors. We talked with prospective families and members of the community. We asked them their impressions of Merrimack, what they think we do best, what makes us special, what makes us stand out.

And this is what they said.

Merrimack Is About Engagement

What is the Merrimack brand? In a word, Engagement – the shared participation, involvement, and interaction of students, institution, and community – in all that we are and do. Here, at Merrimack College, our focus is on active, immersive, experiential, hands-on learning. This is no new initiative on our part. We’ve long been committed to engaged learning. It was what made us distinctive fifteen years ago. It is what makes us distinctive today.

Engagement At Our Core

Engagement is everywhere at Merrimack College. It’s in our classrooms, where students are active participants in their learning. It’s in our research labs, where students and professors work side by side. It’s in our renowned co-op program, where students gain practical experience in professional work settings. It’s in our hundreds of internships, in Boston, across the country, and around the world. Engagement is in every facet of our campus life. It’s in our many leadership opportunities. It’s in our curriculum planning. It’s in our programs and policies. It is first and foremost in all we do. It is at our very core.

A Unique Brand of Engagement

If you look around at other colleges and universities, you’ll find this level of commitment to engagement to be quite rare – particularly so in the small, traditional Catholic liberal arts context. Which is a good thing, because it gives Merrimack a powerful opportunity to position itself as an innovative leader in this new form of Catholic higher education.

Yes, other New England Catholic colleges have internships and co-op programs. And yes, they offer forms of experiential learning. But more often than not these experiences are just one part of these schools’ curricula. A deep commitment to engagement is not at their core. It is not the very essence of who they are.

Here, at Merrimack, engagement is the lens through which all our decisions are made. It is our essence.

It is our brand.