State COMM outline, part II
I’ve modeled the following presentation and the State COMM organization from work done at UF. The universities are very similar and the process works well there. It’s worth a try here. http://www.president.ufl.edu/committees/strategiccommunication/
Introduction
The North Carolina State University Communications Network (STATE COMM) will be made up of NC State Communicators including information officers, news writers, public relations professionals, publications and marketing professionals and others from across campus. By working together, STATE COMM will provide news and information about NC State and enhance communications both within NC State and with the university’s critical publics. The network will be charged with providing more efficient and effective communications, greater use of existing resources and enhanced public relations to strengthen the university.
Structure and Mission
STATE COMM will be coordinated by NC State’s Office of University Communications and an advisory board chaired by the Chief Communications Officer or by his designee. Members of the advisory board will be appointed by and serve at the pleasure of the chair.
The mission of STATE COMM will be to enhance and maximize the overall communications efforts of NC State University, and to assist in the development and implementation of coordinated and consistent university-wide messages.
Goals
- Develop a university-wide strategic communications plan
- To consistently communicate unified messages and initiatives to NC State Communicators
- To serve as a clearinghouse for NC State issues, incidents and plans
- To coordinate and promote training and professional development opportunities for its members
- To take advantage of shared resources and ideas among members
- To promote camaraderie among members
Committees
There will be four active STATE COMM committees and an Advisory Board. All members of the NC State Communications Network will be encouraged to participate. The work of the committees will contribute significantly to the communications systems, policies and procedures on campus. Meeting times/dates will be scheduled by the individual committee chairs, and meetings will normally be held monthly.
- STATE COMM Advisory Board
The nine- to 13-member board will be made up of key communicators from across campus and representatives from University Communications. Their role will be to provide guidance and oversight for the organization.   The advisory board will also be responsible for leading the development of a university-wide strategic communications planning initiative.   The plan will coordinate a campus-wide effort to promote strategic communications; strengthen the university’s brand and unify key themes and messages; maximize use of available research and resources; identify and propagate best practices and the most cost-effective communications strategies; and provide guidance where needed on implementation and evaluation.
- Marketing / Public Relations Committee
Involved with communications that include a marketing component, such as strategic planning, awareness campaigns and advertising. Also charged with helping campus communicators become more effective through improved tools, processes and training programs.
- Web/Electronic Communications Committee
Concerned with all forms of electronic communications as they involve the university. Â Â This would include the NC State homepage, college and unit home pages, social networking activities, and more.
- Publications Committee
The Publications Committee will focus on external publications across campus and work to develop design and graphic guidelines that reflect the NC State brand and key messages of the university.
- Internal Communications Committee
Concerned with improving the efficiency and effectiveness of internal communications, campus-wide.
More to come. Much more. And if you don’t like the State COMM name, shoot me your suggestions. Hey, maybe we can give a prize to whoever has the best name suggestion. We can vote on it at the big group meeting. At Florida I wanted to call the communcations group Gator MarCom, but was advised against it because not all faculty members are on board with The Gator Nation. Too bad.
And remember, this is just a starting point and the document here a thought starter. Here’s the direct link to what they are doing at UF to mobilize the communications network. http://ufcn.urel.ufl.edu/index.shtml
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4 comments
Welcome to NC State! I’ve worked on a couple of the recent iterations of the committees you’ve noted in this post, and look forward to seeing what changes are around the bend. In the meantime, I can’t resist the urge to ask how your staff feel about you having what is essentially an NC State website with a .com domain, and not within the .ncsu.edu domain! It’s been an interesting point of discussion, and this blog is a good example of the debate. URLs aside, I like the transparency this forum provides for your vision. Best wishes!
Because it’s designed as my professional blog (and web site) we decided to do it offline, so to speak. I actually had been using the hiceschool name on a couple of other things before as well and I already had the Dream Host site up and running. Transparency is critical and the blog was the best way to reach out an provide an opportunity for everyone and anyone to respond and stay informed.
Works for me!
One of our biggest challenges is to reach people who don’t consider themselves “campus communicators” to make them aware of important general communication notions such as branding, reputation management, and audience, purpose, and context considerations, and more specifically the rhetorical devices and skills that can be used toward those considerations.
Often people assigned to design, code, or update Web pages see themselves as engineers, programmers, or sometimes even administrative folks, not as communicators, so don’t think that this stuff applies to the work they do. And beyond making them aware, we need to find a way to engage them so that they’ll want to participate. I’m not sure in which committee this type of thing would fall, but I’d like to see it explicitly stated as one of the committee’s charge.
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