Covenant College Public Relations

4. Fix the design of the alumni e-newsletter.

5. Campus related events need to be advertised via multiple channels of communication. This includes The View, the alumni e-mail, the website, print mailings, and second tier communication points (ByFaith, Bagpipe Online, Covblogs, and general Covenant bloggers). For any given event there needs to be a coherent narrative presented in each of the communication points that works in conjunction with each of the other communication points.

This is both an aesthetic and functional consideration. Along with the need for design and narrative consistency across each communication point (relevant to the specific event), each communication point needs to functionally complement the other.

For example: a print mailing encourages the recipient/reader to visit Covenant's webpage to view an event specific page. The event specific page encourages people to sign up for print mailings and/or the e-mail newsletter. Digital "press kits" sent to bloggers and/or other news outlets encourage a visit to the website.

Right now, the various communication points of the college not only aren't working in conjunction. They're barely working at all.

6. For Pete's sake, add RSS feeds to the Covenant site.

7. Do a better job of hyping things like The Chalmers Center and The Kaleo Center. Doing so presents the college as a vibrant and dynamic institution. While news about a new baseball coach is important, it should be part of a consistent stream of news and information out of the college to the alumni.

8. Control the college's narrative via the above. Somebody like myself shouldn't even be relevant to setting the tone for what is happening at at the college. If I am playing a bigger-than-I-should role (i.e. a negative one) the college can silence me with stronger and more consistent message. Diminish whatever relevance I have.

And if you're getting folks like myself some type of press-kits then I've got good news to publish, not just the bad.

9. Comission a musician to present his/her version of the college hymn for each homecoming. Somebody like Sufjan Stevens. Make it available for download on the website. Alumni will eat this up.

10. Get a definitive version of the hymn for download on the website. It's a little thing, but the little things are extremely important.

11. Diminish the role in the eyes of the public that Wallace Anderson plays. He's becoming, with each passing day, the boogeyman and scapegoat of everything and anything that does go wrong and might go wrong at the college. This isn't just the opinion of a few alumni. It's the opinion of many of the alumni, faculty, and staff.

Think of him like the Karl Rove of Covenant College. If President Nielson doesn't do something soon to address the situation, he's going to find a PR disaster on his hands. Again, its one thing to have a few angry alumni calling for the firing/resignation of Wallace; it's another thing to have the faculty and trustees echoing those sentiments.

12. President Nielson needs a "blog." It doesn't need to be a real blog (with comments) but it should be a place for Nielson to publically address matters of relevance to the College. It should also have a place for visitors to submit their questions, comments and thoughts to President Nielson for him to read and occasionally respond to. Alumni need to feel like they're both being heard and being talked to. Right now, for the most part, they feel neither.

The president of the college, like it or not, sets the institutional tone. That tone needs to be understood and tangible, or people will look at the administration with suspicion and will forget about the college because it has become something... unknown. A blog is a place for interested parties to gain some understanding of President Nielson, and thus the college.

That's it for now. I'm back to work.

Yay, number 9.

I also have this little dream of Covenant having an annual juried competition where alumni submit their artworks that could be hung in the library, chapel, lobby, hallways, offices, etc. Even though the art major just started, a lot of talented visual artists have passed through the art barn. Actively acquiring alumni pieces would create a unique visual history around campus.

Who's Wallace Anderson? I searched Cov's website, and I can't figure out this so-called ominous character is.

Having just been down to the college and interacted with someone who was just bushwhacked by Mr. Anderson, his role in much that is going wrong is hard to estimate. He is, after all, a Vice President, and thus doesn't - or at least shouldn't - have a direct hand in much of what goes on. But people more familiar with the situation than I have described a consistent tendency to micro-manage. It is a mystery to me why the Vice President of Admissions should have anything at all to do with the installation of carpet, but apparently Mr. Anderson felt the need to become involved. If this is indicative of his tendencies in other areas - and I have no reason to believe that it is not - the man just needs to go.

I'm starting to think that a lot of the problems I have with college policies aren't really Neilson's doing after all.

Josiah, you and I have discussed this already, but for the sake of those who weren't in on our conversation, I'll mention that while I don't work in the college's communications office, I know that the folks there are in agreement with you on the majority of the points you make. Initiatives are underway already to address a number of your concerns. Others are hamstrung by lack of resources, human and otherwise. (Unfortunately, Covenant has to make ugly decisions every year, like, "Do we hire a senior PR person with industry experience, or do we fix the leaking pipes in Carter, or do we give faculty a 1.5% raise....") So, I'd counsel patience and encouragement from alums (especially for the sake of those alums who were so intent on fixing things that they abandoned other careers to come back to the college and try to help out).

Re: Ryan's comment on WA, I can only say that the reason a VP for Enrollment Management gets involved in carpet decisions is because current and prospective students and parents walk on the carpet. When it looks shabby, Covenant's enrollment--admissions and retention--isn't helped. If no one else has addressed the problem, a VP can (perhaps should?) step in.

Big big big yay for #9 and 10. I would eat it up with both hands.

I think #7 and #8 are the most insightful and most necessary.

Gee thanks Todd (#8)

:)

Good ideas, Q. I hope the Powers Who Are are able to listen to your suggestions and implement some of them to their benefit. You obviously actually care about what Covenant is doing and how they are moving forward. That's in contrast to somebody like me, who was alienated too long ago (by poor or nonexistant communication [actually by "we'll keep in touch, but only if we want money!"]) to really care at this point...

PS: Who's Wallace Anderson?

I also think it would be great if the college had some way for alumni to indicate which types of communication they'd like to receive. I like print mailings but I don't want to be contacted on the phone, for example.

Overall I agree with your points. Good stuff.

Josiah, I think overall most of your suggestions are right-on, and I have to agree with Todd that numbers 7 & 8 strike me as particularly good. The website could be so much more than it is - especially in communicating the many valuable facets that make Covenant and the Covenant College experience unique. If you polled the student body, I am sure that you would discover that the website does not adequately represent what students (or alumni) care about. Not that this can't be remedied - Just look how much better the site is now compared to 5 years ago. We just need to go a little further...

As to #9 - I think John Wykoff's variation of the college hymn (first place in the Mountain Affair a couple years ago) defintely fits into this category...

I think I'm far enough away from Covenant to be (thankfully) unaware of most of the controversies, and I don't have time to check the site on a regular basis. But the alumni newsletter could definitely stand some work. I had to change emails and proceeded to inadvertently kick myself completely off the list. Considering how difficult it was to get on in the first place, I've let it drop entirely. It'd be nice to have regular updates, though.

I second #9, but I'm for anything that involves Sufjan.

Chuck Tiede wonders if Illman would mind the college hymn being sung by the Smashing Pumpkins (thereby forcing a reunion)?

Maphet, Tad Evearitt is working on making the alumni newsletter opt-in, so if you want you'll be able to receive multiple copies at multiple addresses. Hooray!

Tad's also supposed to work on site redesign this fall (I think the new athletics site is up already at athletics.covenant.edu). There is talk of delivering more rich content via the website, too--MP3s of good lectures or chapel talks, PDFs of faculty papers, etc. Getting all of that up and running, though, while doing all of the college's design, web development, and photography is keeping young Tad very busy.

Completely agree with John G. Not an alumi myself, but appreciate and support Chalmers. Very disheartened to find that my name is now on all Cov pub lists. I really don't care about all the rest - please only send me Chalmers news...

Another thought: Covenant could get quite a bit of these things done by using students as resources.

Calvin College's website is just as text-heavy and clunky as Covenant's, *but* they have fun things like The Dormulator where prospective students can rearrange and decorate a virtual dorm room. The Dormulator was a student's "Educational Technology" term project.

Some students might not like this idea, but what if Kaleo placed more students -- especially business majors -- as interns at the school itself. I think it would be an invaluable experience to learn how to write PR copy for an institution, to create press kits, etc. Or, instead of having your Marketing project be for an imaginary company, have students do the grunt work for ideas like these.

Something like this did happen when a coupel of very talented students created a promotional video for the school. It looked fantastic and it had the added appeal of showing off the kind of students Covenant attracts.

Yeah, Elissa! At the Maclellan Foundation (and our sister org. Generous Giving), where I work, we've had a lot of success using Covenant interns to work on projects for which it would just be too expensive to hire full-time staff. We've found that Covenant students (ours are all from the philosophy department) are creative, hard-working, great at research and writing... most of Generous Giving's website (www.generousgiving.org) would have been impossible to execute without the vital resource of our Covenant interns. It's also a benefit to the student who gets to see how the skills they are acquiring in college play out in the working world. I second your suggestion for interns...

PR is hard. And it might be becoming harder in a time when some or most of us are connected to/communicated to in more than one way--a www site, email, blogs. While those of us who are pretty technologically adept may easily use new ways to get information, it's not always easy to develop the methods and ways of sending that information, especially when that information is coming from a lot of different people. My guess is that it's a very dynamic process--say for instance, you, the designer know the article or page needs 'this', your boss adds another 'this', the person who is writing your text adds three more 'thats', and then you get a couple of emails saying, "You forgot this and that AND THIS!"

From my former administrative work at Covenant, I know that it takes work to be cohesive and coherent and timely. I know that the administration at Covenant is trying to communicate in cohesive and coherent and timely ways. You can see it in their eyes and feel it when you walk past their offices. And they are also doing the REST of their work--serving students and serving the kingdom of God and serving God.

I think the CC www site has improved recently--the pictures of the recent gala are great and at least one of them is a real hoot, it's pretty easy to find the academic calendar for this year, there's an orientation schedule posted, there's even a collection of photographs taken by students. The 50th anniversary page is great and eyecatching, though it did kinda startle me when the first picture that popped up in the animation was of a student who (I think) didn't graduate from CC.

Today's conclusion--I think you've got to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time.

(I would love to hear different alumni record versions of the college hymn. I hereby nominate Pamela Lucas for a version!)

I don't know about whether the college can pull off the Dormulator, but they did hire some business majors as interns last year. And if you thought the admissions short was good, you should see the WIC Love Gift video. Significant student involvement on the filming and editing. Beautiful stuff.

As someone who in the past has been critical of Covenant's administration (via a blog), I am excited to see a very positive discussion like this occuring. While this blog post & discussion might not result in direct action by the administration, I think it is very healthy and helpful in at least a few ways.

First of all, I think it is obvious that we all want the best for Covenant--we want God to be glorified and his kingdom expanded via the institution of Covenant College. All the people involved in this discussion are here because we care about Covenant and want to contribute, in whatever minute way, to it moving forward by God's grace. Josiah, thank you for initiating a positive/constructive conversation like this.

Secondly, I think point #8 is interesting, but double-sided. Yes, I think Covenant could do a better job of controlling it's media coverage (I've learned a thing or two being in DC), but I also think that the primary way that the message of Covenant College spreads is via alumni. As an alum, I need to be aware that I represent the college. For many of my friends, all that they know about Covenant is that I graduated from there. Similarly, I went to Covenant largely because I had two teachers in high school who were alum and were amazing people. In the past some of us have said things online that may have been a bit rash and weren't balanced with positive comments about the school. I hope that going forward, we can find a balance between raising valid concerns and also promoting a place that we know and love. Josiah, thanks for taking the lead on this.

Well said, Justin!

Back when Denis Fogo was the communications director, I was an intern for him, as were several other students from different majors. I got to help write press releases and I wrote and copy edited articles for the View (which i think has improved, don't you?) After Denis left, I'm not sure if there was still a coherent internship program, but I wrote a freelance article for the View when it published again. That internship was a good experience and it would be nice to hear that the opportunity is still available, although it would be under different leadership.

Maybe not the Smashing Pumpkins Mr. Tiede, but a more relaxed Billy would do.
(Carver?)

Indeed...neither I nor Chuck Tiede could agree more with you Mr. Illman.

As long as we're nominating people to cover "All for Jesus," I'll submit Jeff Tweedy, Bruce Springsteen, and of course Bryan Adams (simply for the large Canadian contingency at Covenant). As for women, I think Patty Griffin, Mary J. Blige, and of course Alanis Morissette (simply for the large Canadian contigency at Covenant) would all rock it reformed style.

Better get Sufjan on board before he gets too famous/busy.

Ooh, ooh, ooh. Sufjan Stevens doing All for Jesus. Wouldn't that be brilliant.