Update on strategic positioning for June 2022 | Summer communications & enjoy all DU and Denver have to offer

As we head into the summer months, our MarComm tools will shift slightly to support stakeholders through summer experiences, time away, and adventures in, around, and outside of Denver. I am looking forward to exploring the local area even more than I already have, meeting with new and current friends and colleagues along the way.

Field Notes Returns

Field Notes is a series of DU Newsroom stories highlighting the area around DU, Denver, and beyond. The series is targeted to students—current and prospective—to show them that DU is about more than just campus experiences. Field Notes also helps to connect new and existing employees to the community in which we work. Past articles include best pizza places, best places for a brew, best hikes near campus, and more. This year’s series will kick off mid-June and publish every Wednesday. We will share the articles on DU’s social media channels and in The Bridge. Watch for upcoming articles on the best record stores, farmers markets, and museums.

The Bridge

The Bridge saw a refresh in April and we’ll be continuing to publish the newsletter once a week year-round (except over winter break). Over the summer, we expect slightly smaller editions, as much of our news revolves around the academic calendar, but this will mean quicker reads! You can count on The Bridge to be in your inbox every Tuesday morning. Please continue sending us your news and events, including if you would like to nominate your department or a program within your department to be one of our weekly Featured Departments. Do you have another program or department you want to know more about? You can nominate them as well.

Media Tours

This spring, Chancellor Jeremy Haefner has been working with our office to increase the University’s visibility and his position as a thought leader in higher education. Through visits to The Wall Street Journal, Inside Higher Ed, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, the chancellor has had the opportunity to share updates on research taking place at DU, efforts around mental health on campus and within the community, civil discourse, the 4D Experience, and how the new James C. Kennedy Mountain Campus is quickly developing.

In our effort to continue supporting all faculty and staff with their media relations efforts, earlier in May, we held two op-ed workshops. The sessions were open to the campus employee community to learn more about the writing process and what it takes to get a piece placed with media. Additionally, the process is underway to select the fifth cohort of Public Impact Fellows. Participants of the program complete a yearlong training that helps them with disseminating research across print, radio and broadcast media, policymakers, funding agencies, book marketing, and social media.

Event Support

DU enjoys exciting community-building and educational events every week, and our team has been working hard to get the word out on as many channels as possible. To prioritize our storytelling and brand rollout efforts, Juan Niño and Gretchen Pressley have started work on a special event service model to standardize the event promotional support MarComm is able to offer. Our hope is that having a model of support will not only make it easier as we collaborate with our campus partners, but it will also enable us to do a better job of anticipating needs and ensuring more consistency in promotions. We want to maximize our efforts and help ensure the DU community is in the know about important happenings on campus. Please give us as much of a heads up as possible (summer planning, anyone?) about annual and special events so that we can provide strategic support and get your event on the calendar as soon as possible.

Crisis Communications & Issues Management

As Mike Bunker and Shira Good move this work forward, they’ve met with several campus leadership groups to solidify the operational staffing plan. After great conversations and discussions, we have landed on a leadership structure that mirrors our partner agencies (Denver PD, fire, FBI, and others who may respond to a DU incident) called the Incident Command System (ICS). The ICS operates with the Incident Management Team (IMT) responsible for responding to critical incidents, supporting school- or program-based incident response teams, and assisting with planning and training campus-wide.

Whatever your summer plans, it’s our hope that you won’t suffer from FOMO and will be able to stay in the know on what’s happening on campus. As always, please feel free to reach out to me, Shira Good (Shira.Good@du.edu), or Johanna Blickenstaff (Johanna.Blickenstaff@du.edu) with any questions you might have regarding our communications, marketing, or strategic positioning efforts.