Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum

 

Senior Capstone Project - Expansion and Renovation of Museum and the 2023 Bicentennial Celebration  

 

Fall 2014

 

We worked with the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum to help them develop ideas for their renovation to their museum. They plan to make changes to their current exhibits once their new building is finished. This semester we did quantitative and qualitative research through a survey and focus group to assist the museum in targeting school-aged children and parents in the Waco, TX community. Our findings illustrate that immersion, presentation, content and technology are important aspects for the museum to consider when planning their expansion. If they had to focus on one aspect, it should be immersion which sparked the most conversation in our focus group. 

 

Moving forward, we suggested that the museum conduct additional research about their target market. Additionally, The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum should include more technology in their exhibits and present information in various ways. This will provide more interactive opportunities for students. We also recommend allowing people to take on the persona of a Texas Ranger. Throughout their experience they’ll learn more about that Ranger and the different assignments they had throughout their career, thus, fostering a personal connection with someone in the past.

 

 

Spring 2015 

 

This semester we continued working for the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum, however our focus shifted to their bicentennial celebration in 2023. The Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum sees this bicentennial as an opportunity to put the Texas Rangers in a national spotlight. As such, they are looking at making this a nationwide campaign and event series. In order to gain insight into what the celebration might entail, we conducted a content analysis of previous anniversary celebrations, as well as a personal interview of a Texas Ranger.  

 

The main findings from the content analysis are that few anniversary events used social media; however, the ones that did were more current. They mainly used Facebook, Twitter and websites. Across the different events that were analyzed, survey data was heavily relied upon. There was also a wide variety of tactics used for each anniversary. One that was used by all events was the use of television. Our research showed that organizations hosting these events with smaller budgets fully utilized social media and publicity materials. These anniversary events also benefitted from the use of multiple events instead of one signature event. In moving forward, we recommend utilizing these strategies as well as a few other so that the Texas Ranger Bicentennial event can be as well known as possible.

 

To view creative work for the Texas Ranger Bicentennial Anniversary,