Category: higher education

Kansas City Star on Avila’s blogger-in-chief

The Kansas City Star’s education reporter, Mara Rose Williams, recently wrote about college presidents who blog and homed in on the blog of Avila University President Ronald A. Slepitza. The prez “cozies up to his office computer” on a weekly basis to post his thoughts “about life, death and spirituality,” Williams writes. Said Slepitza: “I try to talk a little about myself, the university and about matters I hope will be of interest to the reader.”

It appears his online dialogues are attracting an audience. Most of them, like one titled “Rummaging for God in the Midst of a Busy Day,” have garnered what he called a “powerful response” from readers.

In another blog posting, Slepitza talks about ingredients in a chili dip made with cream cheese, cheddar cheese and a can of chili to segue into a conversation about innovation.

Slepitza’s posts are thoughtful and insightful. But he remains an anomaly — in Kansas City and across the nation.

What’s interesting to me about this story, from a PR and marketing perspective, is Bob Johnson‘s comment that, in general, “PR people tend not to like unscripted messages going out from key university people.” Then Williams finds a PR person to say that monitoring the blogosphere “would be ‘just another chore’ for the public relations office, which already is short on time to keep up with goings-on at the university.”

Just another chore?

Until we change our attitudes about online conversations, we’re going to continue to struggle with new media.

P.S. – Johnson blogged about his conversation with Williams before the story hit. I’m not sure I would have done that. To me, it shows a lack of respect for the journalist who contacted you as a source for a story — not so you could blab about it on your own blog and “scoop” the reporter. Maybe journalists need to better understand this new playing field as well.

Building a brand: a time-consuming balancing act

One of the reasons for the low level of blog activity here lately has to do with the amount of time I’m spending on coordinating a rebranding effort for our university, which will become Missouri University of Science and Technology in January.

Right now, we’re about to embark on an extensive review of four concepts for our graphic identity. This will involve gathering input from students, alumni, faculty and staff through a series of presentations on campus and in St. Louis. We’re also trying to come up with a way to share the concepts online without worrying about whether someone will download or copy them. We’re having trouble making that happen, but if we don’t allow viewing of the concepts online, then some students who are away for the summer will claim we’re trying to make a decision without their input. After our three-day presentation and data-gathering binge, we’ll try to sort through all the qualitative and quantitative input (yes, we’re doing surveys at these presentations, too), and we’ll try to make sense of it all so that we can move forward with a workable concept.

Doing marketing in a college environment is a tricky task. It’s important to get input from as many stakeholders as possible, while politely reminding the stakeholders that the ultimate decision resides with the marketing team. Not everybody will be happy with the final decision, but at least they will have had the opportunity to voice their opinions through this process.

We have a committee of about 30 or so that is responsible for coordinating the name change effort, including the brand identity. That’s a pretty big group, and we’ve tried to make it as representative as possible while keeping it manageable. But because of the timing — summertime, when many students and faculty are off campus — we’re not as representative as we might be if this were happening during the academic year. But we become Missouri S&T on Jan. 1, so we have to work quickly.

Recently, I’ve been reminded of what Branding and Marketing‘s Chris Brown wrote about this in her post from last spring, Too many stakeholders:

I think that rebranding a university is much harder than rebranding a company. With a university the stakeholders feel much more ownership of the branding than the stakeholders in a company.

Think about it… how many students shell out hundreds of dollars for the privilege of advertising the university on their chest, backpack, notebooks, car plates. How about alumni?

Most employees want the company to give them branded merchandise, not have them buy it. Most retirees don’t sport the brand like alumni of a university will and do.

So, if you’re wondering what I’ve been up to when I haven’t posted for awhile, rest assured that I’m staying busy.