News Releases
One of the bread-and-butter parts of my job is writing news releases, which can range from new research to features that get picked up in various media outlets. Here are some stories from the past few months:
- Student organizes ‘zero-waste weekend’: This story came about when a professor dropped by my office and said, “You know, I have a student who is doing something pretty interesting…”
- Hurricane’s effects killed sturgeon in Apalachicola River: This story was several years in the making, the result of following up to check on the progress of student research.
- Panthers now considered no. 1 predator of deer in South Florida: What began as a typical news release about animal behavior turned into a viral story. It’s reached more than 163,000 accounts on social media. I also spun my interviews for the story into a feature piece for our alumni magazine.
Campaigns
Example 1: Digital + Print
A persistent issue at the school where I work is visibility. We are one of the smallest schools on a sprawling campus, and yet, consistently, we hear students say as they approach graduation, “I wish I knew about your school earlier.”
To counter this, in the fall of 2021 we launched a pilot digital marketing campaign to raise awareness of our presence on campus. While the goal of the campaign wasn’t to specifically increase enrollment, the response from the campaign was encouraging. In 2022 we launched a 9-month campaign, timed to appeal to students as they began spring semester advising. We also targeted students in nearby transfer schools (half our students are transfer students). In addition to this enhanced campaign, we also ran a series of light pole banners around campus to further reinforce the messaging.
The Results:
Between physical ads, targeted social media paid posts and ads tied to visits to our website, we were able to track a double-digit increase in the number of inquiries from potential students. By the end of the most recent campaign, we saw conversions increase by 314%, and our enrollment numbers are now trending up. This fall, the school is on target to have its largest incoming undergraduate class since before I began more than four years ago, and our graduate program has nearly 250 students, the highest it’s ever been.
Example 2: Promotion and Funding
Chestnut trees have been decimated by blight. But thanks to advances in genetics, a new generation offers hope for the future. The process used to insert blight-resistant genes into embryonic chestnut cells was pioneered by one of our researchers, and so I set about to tell the story of how this process came to be. This story became one of the features in our recent alumni magazine.
The Results:
After the story was published, a major donor to The Chestnut Foundation reached out to the researcher. He wanted to understand the process in detail, and so we made a video to explain it. The benefactor was so intrigued that he agreed to fully fund our lead technician to continue the transformation process across other varieties of chestnut trees.
Design/Layout
My office produces a biannual alumni magazine, The Warnell Log. When I arrived at the school in 2019, one of my first projects was redesigning the magazine—it had become tired and uninspired. With a school that had so much hands-on activity, I felt the magazine needed to be driven by strong visuals and lean on the color palette in the UGA branding guide.
The most recent magazine is a special issue focused on carbon. I chose this topic after receiving feedback from alumni on what they would like to see; many were interested in carbon-related issues, and our research is defining a lot of variables in this area.
While I work with a graphic designer to produce the magazine, I conceived and executed both the redesign and the special carbon section. Most issues are a collaboration between the two of us.
I also maintain ties with past clients and will occasionally create booklets, magazines, posters, whitepapers and other design-related content. Below is a small sampling of projects from the past year. I also recently wrapped up an 11-year stint designing special editions for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in which I assembled and edited content and designed broadsheet newspaper pages.
Photography
Along with video editing and podcasting, I also have experience with photography. Here is a selection of photos from research stories where I joined faculty and students in the field:
