coe-staff: Communications Update

[Dianna Carrizales-Engelmann]

The following message is sent on behalf of Dean Randy Kamphaus:

Dear Faculty and Staff,

As you all know, our college's communication team has recently undergone some unpredictable shifts. Our solid team of three has, in the space of a few months, been impacted by personnel moves, university-initiated shifts, and unthinkable tragedy. Cody Pinkston's departure left us without a communication director just as we learned that Aaron Montoya's position would be integrated into the Central University Communications office, and Lillian's recent passing has left us with a very changed landscape.

These changes will continue to impact our team and the way we work for some time, but we will use this period of flux to rebuild, and re-envision our communication in light of our strategic plan. As many of you already know, our communications team is currently operating on a reduced schedule as follows:

*         Over the past few weeks, Aaron Montoya has been closing out his open projects and high priority items and will be moving to his new office in Central Communications this week.  We wish Aaron the best in his new role!

*         We have hired a temporary part-time writer (Jeffery Bolkan - jbolkan at uoregon.edu<mailto:jbolkan at uoregon.edu>) who is with us three days a week until a new Communications Director is hired. That search is now underway.

*         Natalie Maier, an intern from the School of Journalism and Communication, has been supporting us with our social media presence and some ongoing projects; and

*         Lisa Fortin - in her role as events coordinator - will continue to move our events forward.

This interim communications team will function under the supervision of Dianna Carrizales-Engelmann with support from our University Communications office. During this time, we will need to be strategic about the use of our communications resources, by thinking directly about mission, vision, values, and purpose. Until our team is back at capacity please forward all high-priority communications requests to Dianna Carrizales-Engelmann. The process will be somewhat different from the processes we were accustomed to when our team was fully staffed, so please plan ahead for these needs. We will keep you updated as we learn more.

In the near future, some COE faculty and staff will be invited to participate in a "communications discussion" to provide input on your/our visions for communications overall (as they pertain to programs and students), and for our website. These conversations will be led by the University Communications office with input from COE leadership. The timing of these conversations is well attuned with the final version of the college's Plan and will allow our updated communications activities to align with other updates underway in our college. This is the synergy I had hoped for when I first learned that our communications office would be aligning with the University Communications office.

We are optimistic that our team will be fully functioning again by mid to late April.

Looking forward to the times ahead,



RWK



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