The Gateway District

From a communications perspective, the Gateway District has been as complicated as any project in recent KU history due to its multifaceted impact on student recruitment, economic development, conference and event hosting capabilities, and football. Additionally, the project has come with unique political sensitivities related to funding, community partnerships and campus logistics that have required great care and nuance in communication. Since the outset of the project, Daniel has expertly prioritized the various project components and tailored messaging to specific audiences, along the way ensuring that university partners have been consistent in their communications. In particular, he has partnered extensively with the Office of the Chancellor, Jayhawk Community Partners, KU Endowment, the KU Alumni Association and the Office of Facilities Planning & Development. Below are some of the key project milestones for which Daniel led or helped manage communications.

• In October 2022, Daniel helped lead the initial announcement of the Gateway District on the eve of an ESPN College Gameday national TV broadcast live from Lawrence.
• In February 2023, Daniel helped manage the announcement of upcoming renovations to Anderson Family Football Complex, which was crucial to demonstrate momentum to various KU stakeholders, particularly prospective football student-athletes who were making decisions about the fall 2024 season.
• In June 2023, Daniel partnered with the university on the announcement of the RFQ process for developers interested in bidding on the Gateway District project.
• In August 2023, Daniel helped lead a truly remarkable kickoff event for the project at the Jayhawk Welcome Center, garnering incredible regional and national attention for the Gateway District and more broadly for Kansas Football.
• Since fall 2023 and through 2024, Daniel has announced major gifts from donors for the Gateway District and done so in a strategic way that has conveyed momentum and continuous progress. There is no question that his communication is a factor in helping future and prospective donors make the decision to support the project.

Football in Kansas City

In January 2024, Daniel was on point for the university’s announcement that Kansas Football would play its upcoming season at Children’s Mercy Park and Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, not in Memorial Stadium as previously planned. The reception to this plan has been overwhelmingly positive among most stakeholder groups – particularly gameday fans, donors, alumni, current student-athletes, and prospective student-athletes who are considering coming to KU next year – thanks in large part to Daniel’s work.

While most stakeholders have expressed excitement about the plan, the arrangement is perhaps suboptimal for some audiences, including students who have to travel to the game and Lawrence-based businesses who plan on gameday crowds in Lawrence. Daniel and his colleagues did a great job recognizing this in their initial announcements and went to great lengths to ensure those audiences that Kansas Athletics would be taking steps to address the challenges presented by the move to Kansas City. This has included collaboration with various community partners in both Lawrence and Kansas City.

Guaranteed Rate Bowl

From a football perspective, bowl appearances are important opportunities to showcase a program to prospective student-athletes who are deciding where to go to college. Beyond that, bowl games are uniquely important moments for universities to engage in-person with fans, donors and alumni while enhancing the university’s brand on a national stage.

For all these reasons, Daniel’s communications work surrounding KU’s appearance in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl in December 2023 benefited both Kansas Football and the broader university. With all eyes on a resurgent KU football program, Daniel helped drive and capitalize on extensive national media attention in a way that elevated KU’s brand. This included an extensive social media and digital campaign, as well as countless hours of in-person engagement with media in the days leading up to the game. Daniel also helped organize production meetings with the television broadcast crew, arrange media availabilities for the program while in Arizona and led a content plan that highlighted the team’s bowl trip and elevated the brand on a national stage. Daniel’s communications team also produced a Postseason Media Guide, which in 2022-23 for the AutoZone Liberty Bowl was voted the No. 1 Postseason Guide in the nation by College Sports Communicators.

“Regular” responsibilities

In addition to the abovementioned projects, Daniel has been terrific in executing his various “day-to-day” assignments, which include early mornings at Kansas football workouts, late nights at Allen Fieldhouse, and unexpected issues that arise in Kansas Athletics and get immediate public attention. In recent months, he has managed communications for the successful resolution of KU basketball’s compliance matter, developments involving high-profile student athlete, and widespread media speculation about the employment of our head football coach. Through it all, he has done a great job partnering with KU units ranging from the Office of Public Affairs, the Office of Student Affairs, KU Endowment and the KU Alumni Association, to name just a few.

The truth is, for any given month during the past decade, Christy Little Schock has been deserving of this award. Since 2011, she’s served as a nexus for editing and distributing news from KU News Service and embedded communicators across KU. In 2011, she took on responsibility for the nascent KU Today newsletter and made it into the central source of news across KU. And as a result, at any given moment she’s perhaps the most informed person in terms of everything happening at KU … and she uses that knowledge to help colleagues better promote their news – and avoid missteps! – every day.

But the most recent example of her great work – and the reason she is this month's Communicator of the Month – is her work on the new KU News site. We all know how challenging it’s been to get this site launched due to staffing challenges and turnover within KUIT. It’s a process that goes back to at least 2019. But thanks predominantly to Christy, the site has finally been launched. And the timing is perfect, as this site is going to be integral to our new content management strategy and the launch of our new brand in the months ahead.

DETAILS OF WEB OVERHAUL

When the long, winding journey to a new KU News site first began, Christy’s experience with receiving, editing and publishing content through the CMS made her instrumental in guiding the Marketing and IT teams and shaping the process. More recently, in these past few months as we’ve finally reached the finish line, it is clear how much her knowledge with these processes made the final product more functional.

For example:

- Christy ensured we maintained thousands of images going back to 2011 when the site switched from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8.

- Christy caught countless bugs in the initial version — from dates not appearing on stories to URLs not working to images not appearing — that otherwise wouldn’t have been resolved until much farther downstream.

- Christy created a formal training process and a written users’ guide for KU News writers, the system’s first adopters.

- More than anything, Christy served as the insightful central manager to convey campus communicators’ expectations and needs to the IT team.

CLOSING

In sum, KU News would not have a functioning website now without Christy’s expertise and dogged perseverance in calling attention to malfunctions and complications that would have rendered the user interface and website unusable for our family of campus communicators. For that, she is deserving of thanks and praise from her colleagues. 

Earlier this month, KU pulled off a truly impressive feat by hosting Commencement inside David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium, which has been under construction since last fall. 

In addition to the logistical challenges of hosting thousands of guests at a construction site, this event created tremendous communications complexities for Meredith and her colleagues in Marketing. Specifically, Meredith and her team were tasked with 1) communicating event details to graduates and families prior to the event and 2) creating event-day marketing materials to make Commencement special for attendees. Thanks to Meredith’s talent and leadership, the Marketing team successfully accomplished both tasks and created a memorable event for the Class of 2024 and their families.

To fully appreciate Meredith’s work, it’s important to recognize that the stadium was evolving in a difficult-to-predict way leading up to the event. In other words, Meredith and her team had to be nimble and proactively think through all kinds of scenarios – and would have to create materials not knowing exactly how the stadium might look on Commencement day. It was in this fluid environment that Meredith expertly led the strategy and development of pre-event messaging for graduates and guests covering topics like parking, stadium capacity, accommodations and alternate viewing locations, while also leading creation of event-day marketing items such as stadium signage, the Commencement brochure, the Commencement video and the run-of-show for the event.

Thanks to contributions from Meredith and dozens of other people from across the University, Commencement was an unqualified success, with countless attendees commenting on how unique and enjoyable the event was. Fittingly, Meredith got to experience firsthand the joyful vibe she helped create on the Hill by virtue of her volunteering to be a University Marshal on the day of the event. For her colleagues who know how much work she put into Commencement, it was wonderful to see her in regalia greeting graduates as they entered the stadium.

When asked about her work on Commencement, one of Meredith’s colleagues said, “Right from the start, Meredith embraced the challenge of hosting Commencement inside a construction site. Specifically, she felt strongly that KU had to get this right for the Class of 2024 because many of these students didn’t have a high school graduation due to COVID. I think that’s what fueled her and why she cared so deeply about this project – and it absolutely shows in the work she did.”

Beyond her remarkable work on Commencement, as a marketing strategist Meredith works diligently to plan and communicate robust marketing strategies that serve partners and the university as a whole. Her responsibilities include gathering information from partners to fully understand the needs of the unit, audiences and build a holistic campaign that accurately addresses those needs. Despite having only joined Marketing a little more than a year ago, Meredith has quickly become one of the most trusted resources in the office due to her astute attention to detail. 

Specifically, Meredith is the strategist for Graduate Enrollment Management, the Leavenworth campus and Jayhawk Global for-credit programs – each of which experienced strong enrollment growth in the last year. More specifically, they experienced strong marketing KPIs, especially in terms of new inquiries (leads) received and quantity of applications. To complete this work and achieve these results, Meredith works with every part of KU Marketing (digital, design, editorial, photo/video, ops/finance, social), the service units (Enrollment Management, Leavenworth, Graduate Military Programs, Jayhawk Global, Academic Success), as well as numerous academic units and others. 

When asked why Meredith has succeeded in her role, her supervisor said, “Meredith embodies a myriad of qualities that make her an effective communicator. Her communications with the Marketing team and partners are consistently clear and concise. Her preparation and organization are meticulous. Meredith’s efficiency and intuition enable her to navigate complex situations with ease and accuracy, consistently strategizing for positive outcomes. Her contributions exemplify the spirit of effective communication and collaboration.”

Dan Oetting is nominated for KU’s Communicator of the Month award for his work this past year to advance the university's strategic plan for research through the promotion of the Hall Center for the Humanities and its researchers. In particular, his imagery and content presentation put research at KU in a good light and served the Hall Center especially well.

Content focus

After a content audit of all Hall Center content, Dan sought to further its strategic aims by focusing on two areas: improving the quality and frequency of news for current channels and enhancing the visual assets used by the Hall Center.

Dan added news features to Hall Center publications and increased the number of news releases distributed through KU News by 40%, enhancing the visibility and awareness of the Hall Center in a year that included the hiring of Giselle Anatol as its director.

For social media, a similar frequency of publication to past years was maintained—typically there is a post made for each event hosted. But by focusing on quality and timing of posts, engagement grew. On Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/hallcenterhumanities), for example, it grew seven-fold over a one-year period.

Visual punch-up

Dan also significantly enhanced the visual quality of the Hall Center's web pages and publications. Throughout the year, photographs were taken with the intent to promote research and convey professionalism and credibility while reinforcing brand identity. 

The crucial primary communication points of the Hall Center, its e-newsletter and its event pages on its website, were both redesigned for ease of use and impact. The mobile-friendly e-newsletter was revised by adding greater whitespace, increased contrast, clear hierarchy of text, and prominent calls to action. Event web pages, some of the most heavily visited on the Hall Center’s site, were also revised to be easier for users to find relevant content. By doing so, Dan was able to give users an improved sense of control, making them feel more comfortable that they were on the right path to finding the information they were seeking and satisfied with their interaction.