Work
I work in the Vice President's office at American University. Working under Don Myers, Vice President of Finance and university CFO, I coordinate the web presence and e-communication strategies of the 23 divisions within the Office of Finance (OFT). I also work on special projects such as making real-time GPS data for our fleet of shuttle buses available on the web (or on your cell phone) and serve on the university-wide Web Content Publishing committee.
American University is an exciting place brimming with new ideas, and I love collaborating with colleagues across campus on a variety of challenging projects. I find it highly satisfying to help faculty, staff, and students craft a communication strategy and select and implement the right technical tools to meet their communication goals, thus improving the University one project and department at a time.
Below are some projects of which I am particularly proud.
Recent Projects
Support the AU Campus Plan Campaign The 2011 Campus Plan is a bold $450 million 10-year building project. In order to implement the plan, which would develop an 8 acre parcel into a new east campus, AU requires approval from the DC Zoning Commission. The commission gives great weight to the opinions and support of the school community and local community regarding the plan. Through an integrated marketing campaign with a logo, website, social media presence and online petition, the Campaign for the Campus Plan informs students, faculty, staff, and local neighbors of the benefits of the plan and encourages their strong support. An online petition created for the campaign made it simple for campus supporters to communicate to the Zoning Commission how the Campus Plan would positively impact their lives as well as surrounding area, and more than 250 letters of support were written by individuals and filed as part of our offical application. A strong social media presence, particularly on Twitter, allowed people to follow the various zoning hearings and weigh in with their opinions, even if they could not attend in person. The Zoning Commission hearings were live-tweeted, and #AUCampusPlan became a trending topic for the DC area, further raising awareness of the campus plan.
Human Resources Website Redesign The HR home page is the 8th most visited page on American University’s website. Catering to many audiences with different informational needs, the challenge is to create a site that makes it easy for anyone (current employee, prospective employee, faculty, student, or staff) to find the information they are looking for easily and quickly, while telling the story of why American is an employer of choice in the DC region.
AU Portal Migration AU’s new Sharepoint-powered internal portal (intranet) will allow AU faculty, staff, and students to perform many transactions, such as checking grades, submitting time cards, or applying for a parking permit, in a secure environment. I am working to ensure a smooth transition to the new portal and clear guidelines for the future regarding portal content and web content.
Wonk Rebranding Several years in the making, AU’s new palindrome-tastic WONK branding campaign sums up AU in a single word – smart, passionate people who know their stuff backwards and forwards. Both online and in print, our new materials tell the unified stories of “American Wonks”.
New Technologies
While it is tempting to chase after the newest thing on the market, smart implementations of emerging technologies work because they address an organization’s core problem in ways which are better or different than what was previously available. Here are some past projects I worked on which are both practical and pretty darn cool.
- CULite Mobile Interface -- Have an Iphone or smart phone? Access the Cornell University Library (CUL) catalog where ever you are.
- Quick Response Codes -- AU’s advertisement of public events in the local newspaper includes a QR code, a code which helps connect physical objects to digital objects. Using the code, readers with smart phones can scan the code, browse the community relations web page on their phone, learn more about the events mentioned in the ad, or sign up for the monthly community newsletter. Past work on QR codes included a physical exhibit on Mark Twain at Cornell which used QR codes to link the physical objects on display to additional digital materials such as podcasts and full-text online copies of his books.
- Youtube Artist Videos -- The Mann Gallery features work of local, living artists. In their own words, artists exhibiting in the Gallery discuss their artistic process, explore recurring themes in their work, and point out details in the work on display in a series of short videos.
- SmartMap Interactive Map An online, searchable map of Mann Library at Cornell University which provides service hours, details, and the capacity to host photos and videos.
E-Communication
During my time at Cornell I assisted the Head of Instruction at Mann Library, and implemented the use of a variety of e-communication tools to promote the 80+ Library workshops. This included creating a unified marketing plan, designing e-mail campaigns customized for different audiences (undergraduate, graduate, faculty, etc.), coordinating and publicizing the workshops schedule in other campus online and print news outlets, communicating with registered participants, and tracking attendance via the online registration system. I also created an online feedback survey to gather data on whether the workshops adequately met their stated learning objectives.
I also worked on several special projects, my favorite being TEEAL (The Essential Electronic Agriculture Library). TEEAL is a library device available in over 100 developing countries which provides low-cost access to current academic research. Technological advancements allowed the device to shift from CD-ROMs to an external hard drive, making it more affordable, but also less user-friendly. Usability testing was conducted to understand how a lay audience interacted with the product and its software, and I coordinated a complete revision of the TEEAL marketing and instructional materials with US TEEAL project staff and staff abroad at the training centers in South Africa and Costa Rica. TEEAL received a $1.8 million Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant and this project helped them stay on track to meet the grant's target goal of TEEAL adoption in 114 sub-Saharan African institutions.
Serving on the campus-wide digital signage committee. The committee brought together representatives from across campus including public safety, Cornell IT, and the Office of Communications and Marketing in order to select a digital signage solution for the entire campus which is easy to maintain and meets our public safety needs.
Technical Training
I put my undergraduate concentration in education and graduate coursework in instructional design to work, developing training programs for a variety of technical products. In my role as Web Coordinator, I create instructional materials for AU staff, particularly information on how to use the university CMS to maintain department websites. Prior to coming to DC, I taught in a more formal capacity as a workshop instructor for Cornell University and a Teaching Assistant for Ithaca College. The classes I taught were:
- Photoshop I: beginner
- Photoshop I: intermediate
- Indesign: newsletters
- Indesign for newspapers
- Photo editing and graphic design for newspapers (Special class for the Cornell Daily Sun)
During the 2008-2009 school year I was a teaching assistant (TA) at Ithaca College for:
- Organizational Media Production (graduate level)
- Interactive Multimedia (undergraduate level)
Special Events and Other Activities
At Cornell, I was part of the Mann Library events and exhibits team and the Mann outreach team. The Library presented a wide variety of events--including books talks/podcasts, art exhibits, alumni events, and tours and orientations for students, new faculty and alumni. Working under Howard Raskin, the gallery director, I supervised two student gallery interns. Together we worked with the artists to design, hang and publicize their exhibit in the gallery. I also documented and archived exhibits on the Gallery website, which I designed.
Occasionally I take on freelance clients. I have worked on projects for the Ithaca College Marketing and Communications Office, Park Center for Independent Media, The National Wildlife Foundation, and BAR/BRI Bar Review Prep. I sometimes work pro bono for non-profit causes which interest me or present particularly challenging assignments. These include the Schuyler County Humane Society, Commonland Community and Sew Green, Ithaca. Please use the "contact me" page if you are a non-profit interested in proposing a project.