Perhaps no issue highlights tensions between integrity, transparency and public disclosure so much as the handling of sexual misconduct. In the course of a 2016 investigation by the Boston Globe, Wesleyan learned that its Associate Dean of Students, whose job included the adjudication of student misconduct, had himself been terminated at his previous place of employment for inappropriate behavior. The University hired a law firm to investigate cases adjudicated by the dean while at Wesleyan. The firm did not discover any problems with the adjudications, but this did not satisfy all. The University, whose policy is not to discuss publicly why an employee is terminated, waited to respond until the Globe published its findings, and this delay was criticized by some. Wesleyan does not remove from the records of expelled students the reason for expulsion, despite pressure from such students to do so. In recent years we have also emphasized even more strongly to students the penalties for involvement with illegal drugs on campus, so that there can be no misunderstandings in that area.
Since Wesleyan’s 2013 Reaccreditation, the Office of University Communications (UComm) has been reorganized and expanded in ways that affect almost every aspect of its operations. Most significantly, we hired a chief communications officer who is a member of the president’s cabinet. UComm has now incorporated a former IT unit dedicated to web and video services as well as a position dedicated to arts promotion, and added a high-level marketing position and a digital marketing manager with expertise in social media. Reporting lines have been reorganized along functional responsibilities to break up silos and improve efficiency.
Concomitant with the increased staff resources for marketing, the university has undertaken a “Core Messaging Project” with Lipman Hearne that includes not only research-based analyses and recommendations regarding messaging and branding, but also a separate creative project for all our branding collateral. UComm has also developed a new communications dashboard to gather data and assess progress across the full range of its activities.
Technology underlies all that UComm does, and two enterprise platforms have been recently introduced to support a wide range of communications activities: Brightcove for video storage, distribution and metrics, and Salesforce for e-mail marketing and analysis. Other new software solutions support other aspects of communications operations, such as TrendKite for analysis of Wesleyan’s media presence.
In 2015, the Wesleyan homepage was redesigned and is now responsive and built with a mobile-first approach. The new homepage stresses the importance of the Admission audience, and its redesign was quickly followed by a full redesign of the Admission site, with 45 new academic pages promoting opportunities for study in all curricular fields. There is also now a more consistent look for faculty pages (achieved by introducing dynamically generated pages for each faculty member and providing faculty with Search Engine Optimization guidelines).
In 2013, we completed the conversion of all 230 sites within the Wesleyan domain to the Cascade content management system, and since then we have been redesigning our public-facing sites in a responsive, mobile-friendly format. Although we continue to maintain print versions of many marketing materials, we migrate print to online whenever the technology and moment seem right. This year, for example, we have switched our course catalog to an online platform (CourseLeaf), and in 2016 we introduced a new version of the university calendar—a more user-friendly product intended to solve problems noted in the 2012 self-study.