NEW Westminster Communications Platform

Your internal news is here! Welcome to this inaugural edition of Westminster Today – a weekly email sent to Westminster College faculty, staff and students. As the Office of Marketing & Strategic Communications (MSC) refines the College’s communication approach to effectively reach its varied and diverse audiences, Westminster Today will serve as an important communications channel that will aggregate internal administrative news and highlight some of Westminster’s important news stories that might not be picked up in mainstream media.

“Westminster Today is an important element in an overarching strategic communications platform emerging from MSC that will benefit the entire College,” said President Akande. “The new platform will help professionalize the College’s communication by more effectively targeting the right message to the right audience in a timely and transparent manner.”

Lana Poole, Vice President and Chief Communications Officer and leader of MSC, says the new communications platform helps to efficiently manage the plethora of current and emerging channels of communication with the many Westminster stories that speak to success of faculty, students and alumni. “It’s really the right time for Westminster to put in place the procedures and protocols for enhanced communication,” she said. “The College is transforming and the communication function must evolve in a manner that supports the robust direction – integrating practices and communications to build awareness of Westminster’s strong and enduring brand so that we continue to attract the highest quality students and inspire our parents, alumni and donors to engage and give to secure the promise for current and future students.”

Website becomes hub

The new communications platform effectively places the website as central to external and administrative communications. The website (www.westminster-mo.edu) will serve as the hub for communications to external audiences while the Intranet, MyWC, will be renamed WCNow – indicating an immediate access to information. WCNow will become the robust hub for internal communication – effectively driving information to a Westminster College mobile app, email distribution (such as Westminster Today), and campus calendars and bulletin boards for miscellaneous postings currently being distributed to mass email lists. The mass email will be removed as a means of communication and replaced with the digital hub. Faculty, staff, and students will check the website and the mobile app for timely updates to information. Important internal news will be driven to faculty, staff, and students weekly via Westminster Today.

WC Communications Hub

President Akande said there is no one office or function that operates in a silo and the successful communications transformation will be recognized as a community achievement. “I want to thank each of our units for working with and supporting the Office of Marketing and Strategic Communications in this effort. It is our collective services and collaboration, bound by our unified commitment to student success, that will take us from success to a future of significance.”

The new communications platform helps to ensure compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Watch for further updates in Westminster Today regarding the communications policies and protocol around using the new communication tools coming in 2017.

Do you have a story suggestion for Westminster Today? If you know of a story that would be of interest to the larger internal community of faculty, staff, and students, email the who, what, when, where, why, and how to [email protected]