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FSEC receives communications update
By DONNA BUDINEWSKI
Reporter Assistant Editor
Jennifer McDonough, vice president for university advancement, updated the Faculty Senate Executive Committee yesterday on the status, function and mission of communication entities at UB and sought input from committee members regarding the communication efforts overseen by her office.
The Division of University Advancement, which encompasses the offices of Development, Alumni Relations and University Communications, is undergoing a communications audit to assess the role and function of communications at UB, with the goal of identifying what's successful and how efforts can improve in an evolving university, McDonough explained. She described the role of the two key segments of communications: Marketing and Creative Services, which functions in a client relationship with the UB community, and News Services.
Creative Services focuses its efforts on the creation and design of publications and Web sites, and maintains a consistent design identity among those publications. The Office of Admissions serves as its largest client, she added.
The editors in News Services cover various "beats" at the university to produce collateral material to help position various programs and services, and also are responsible for media interaction and placement.
Both Creative Services and News Services win many national awards for their work, she said. "We can feel proud of what we do, but there's always room for improvement."
One goal, she said, is to make the president's Web site much more interactive, dynamic and reflect "the evolution of the presidency."
"And, when you think of a university-wide Web strategy," she added, we've got some work to do."
She said members of Development and Alumni Relations are in the process of analyzing the successes and failures of the recently completed campaign for UB. "We could have done a much better job of engaging faculty, staff and students in this last campaign and communicating what we were doing," McDonough said.
She told committee members that News Services' national media director, John Della Contrada, had been in the position for just over a year, but that during that period media placements—many of them with prestigious, national media outlets—have risen from about 700 a year to 1,500 a year, she noted.
Several questions McDonough fielded from FSEC members concerned the role and function of the Reporter, the faculty/staff newspaper, and what many said is an "outdated and almost useless" university phone book.
Other committee members expressed concern about what they see as difficulty in disseminating vital departmental information or announcements to students and faculty because of very definitive policies governing the kind of email that can be sent out on university-wide faculty/staff list servs. Voledemar Innus, vice president and chief information officer who attended the meeting to answer questions about the role and function of electronic communications at UB, said the use of MyUB—a personal and interactive Web page for each student—is pervasive.
McDonough told the committee she would come back to the FSEC with an update on the issues that were raised, with the goal of finding solutions to their concerns.
The decision to print a hard copy of the Reporter biweekly, rather than weekly, drew several comments, most of which expressed the desire to see the Reporter return to a weekly print publication. The newspaper currently publishes an online issue weekly, with a print edition published biweekly. McDonough told the committee the decision to decrease publication of the print Reporter to biweekly was budgetary, but agreed to reexamine the issue.
Two committee members suggested that a different focus be developed for the print and online editions of the Reporter, such as gearing the online edition primarily to faculty on campus and the print edition to the broader community.
Another FSEC member expressed concern that since the Office of News Services is now part of the Advancement team, news regarding research and other programs was being filtered through Advancement and its funding potential assessed as a determining factor in whether the news would be promoted to the outside media. McDonough told the committee that each segment of Advancement has a very discrete and well-defined mission. "We always have to evaluate: is it newsworthy, is there a market for it," she said, but emphatically noted that news isn't evaluated for development purposes.