Communications office connects university, alumni, community

Drury University's Office of Univer-sity Communications has a small staff and a lot of responsibilities.

Among other things, the office generates press releases, makes photo arrangements, works with the admission office on recruiting materials, and produces several publications throughout the year, said Tristan Davies, director of university communications.

"In terms of creating an outside image for the university, probably the most im-portant places where that happens are in the admission office, when we recruit students, and the alumni development office, where we talk with people after they graduate or when they consider giving to Drury," Davies said. "One of the things we've been expanding recently is how much we are able to work with the alumni development office. We've been involved in the last few months with the re-design of the alumni newspaper, The Lane."

The communications office also is responsible for putting together the other primary publication for alumni Drury Magazine which comes out twice a year, he said.

"I try to make the office a conduit for sending information about Drury to the outside world," Davies said. "In order to do that, we try to put feelers out all across campus and find out what' s going on."

This often means working alongside other departments and offices on campus, said assistant director Charlie Hun-gerford.

For Drury's new science center, the communications office is working with other departments to plan the inaugural events, he said. "We also put together the brochure and assist with publicity for the university' s weekly convocation series," which is open to the public as well as to students, Hungerford added.

"One of the things that's essential to Drury is connecting to the rest of the Springfield community," Davies said. "In order to do that, whenever there' s something going on that we think will be of interest to people off campus, we work hard to get the information out about that. Considering our size, I think we wind up doing fairly well, making those connections with news media and getting the coverage we' re looking for."

Davies said his experience as a re-porter for KY3 provided an awareness of effective media relations.

The Office of University Communica-tions was the media's primary contact in the recent attacks on two Drury students.

According to Davies, using an open, straightforward approach helped get accurate information to the media and the community. "It was a terrible thing all around," he said. "There' s no point in trying to divert attention away from what happened."

On campus, the office also had a role in figuring out how to let students know what happened and what the options were, he added.

Sometimes the scope of university events extends beyond the local com-munity. "We look for new ideas that might apply elsewhere," Davies said, such as Drury' s partnership with Spring-field Public Schools and Yale University in a school improvement program. "The strength of that partnership among Drury and the public school system is, from what we can tell, very unusual."

The communications office is responsible for gathering information from all the departments when news magazines publish rankings of the best colleges and universities, Davies said.

"That information is collected and funneled through us. Once again, we're acting as a conduit for information."

Three of the four staff members in the communications office have joined the office within the last two years. Davies was hired as assistant director in April 2000 and promoted to director in May 2001.

Hungerford came in August 2001, filling the assistant director position. "A lot of my work revolves around writing and editing for publications," he said. "I write news releases for the university, and I write for the magazine. My experience is in print journalism, especially magazine work, so I focus a lot of my efforts on how we sound in print."

Judy Matteson, coordinator of university communications, joined the communications staff in December 2000. Her responsibilities include assembling "Drury News Today," a daily schedule of events and news items, and broadcasting it to all students, faculty and staff via e-mail. Matteson also collects all the material and information for Drury' s "Expert Guide," a list of professors in various areas of expertise. Her other duties in-clude gathering information for the faculty and staff directory, ordering supplies, and working with the office budget. "I track it and see how we're doing, and help with building one for the next year," she said.

The veteran of the office is Don Ameye, the creative director and publications network administrator. Ameye's 18 years of experience in the office have proven useful to the three newcomers.

"When I have what I think is a really original idea," Davies said, "Don's the one that says, Oh, we tried that about 10 years ago.'"

In the past 18 years, technology ad-vances and other changes have impacted Ameye' s job.

About 10 years ago, when the marketing of higher education became more im-portant, the office began to emphasize priority projects, he said. "Where I used to do 800 jobs, including anything that needed to be printed, I started focusing my efforts and the office' s efforts on the more high-profile publications," Ameye said. Primarily that meant magazines, anything coming out of the president' s office and going to the public, and student recruitment. "That's pretty much where we are now, and we' re expanding from there," he said.

Most of the publications produced by the communications office will direct readers to Drury's Web site, www.drury. edu, Ameye said. "We're trying to get them to it because it has more immediate information," he said. Davies pointed out that the Web site is run out of a separate office. "It' s one of those partnerships we have with a lot of the offices and departments on campus," he said. "The Web office supervises the design and creation of the site, and every department on campus generates its own content. Our role is to provide news-type content, highlighting things like new programs and student and faculty achievements."

Working alongside the four full-time staff are several student employees and interns who write news stories for the Web site. "We set them up with an area of the campus to cover," Hungerford said. "I send them out, and they find their own stories. I give them story ideas if I know about them, but some of the better stories are the ones they find themselves." The students do the research, then Hungerford works with them to develop and fine-tune the stories. "We use it as both a learning experience for the students, to get some real work experience, and also as a chance for them to be published," he said.

Most of the time, a relaxed atmosphere prevails in the office, Davies said. "We all work together really well. We try to have fun and relax, but when things need to get done they need to get done." With such a small office, he said, "we each have to do a bunch of different things, and we need to do them well."