How does your station increase its visibility among different audiences?

This discussion was started on the OBFS listserv by Russ Bradley (Director, Santa Rosa Island Research Station, CSU Channel Islands) who wrote on March 3, 2024: Just checking in on this front. We are a remote island field station from a state school with majority first gen students from underserved backgrounds whose main users are our own undergraduate students in interdisciplinary educational programming (day trips and 3 day visits) . We’ve been struggling with student engagement, overall at our university – enrollment dropped by 25% but this is definitely affecting the field station as well.  There is lower attendance on field station trips, folks dropping out last minute of fully funded trips, a very low threshold for adversity, and generally higher anxiety among students. We are still seeing these impacts (still testing for COVID as we’re still seeing a bit of that too) – and our faculty agree these issues are a challenge for them working with our undergrads in general these days, and we are trying to address this on multiple fronts. Was wondering what others’ experiences are on this front and whether you might have examples of practices that may have addressed these issues effectively.