Strategic Planning | Workflow Design | Cross-Team Collaboration | Scalable Content Systems —University of Tennessee, College of Arts and Sciences

The Challenge

Multiple interdisciplinary programs required new brochures and branded materials for College Connect (Fall 2025).

Historically, each program would approach the communications office individually—often at different times, with varying levels of content readiness. This created inequities in quality, timeline strain for creative teams, and reactive rather than strategic marketing execution.

In higher education environments, coordinating across numerous program directors and faculty adds complexity: competing priorities, uneven engagement, and decentralized decision-making.

My Strategic Approach

Instead of treating this as a design project, I treated it as a systems problem.

I developed a proactive workflow that aligned content and creative teams months in advance, ensuring equitable support across all interdisciplinary programs.

Key elements of the system included:

• A structured production calendar aligned to College Connect deadlines
• A shared content collection document distributed via Microsoft Teams and email
• Clear phases for content gathering, review, creative development, and approval
• Cross-functional checkpoints between content, design, and leadership

Rather than waiting for materials, we provided program directors with a guided framework for submission.

The Content Collection Framework

I worked with my team to create a centralized content collection document designed to serve both immediate brochure needs and long-term marketing strategy.

Programs were prompted to provide:

• Program overview messaging
• Faculty insights
• Course highlights
• Career pathways
• Keywords
• Student, faculty or alumni quotes
• Visual assets

If submissions were incomplete, our team supplemented content to ensure consistency and quality.

The intention was not only to produce brochures—but to build a reusable marketing content library that could support:

• Future web updates
• Social media storytelling
• Recruitment materials
• Feature stories
• Event promotion

This shifted our model from reactive fulfillment to proactive content strategy.

Impact

• Delivered coordinated brochures and swag materials for College Connect 2025
• Established equitable marketing support across interdisciplinary programs
• Reduced last-minute requests and production bottlenecks
• Created reusable content assets for future campaigns
• Our team presented the workflow model at Communicon, UT’s annual campus communicators conference

Most importantly, this system set a precedent for how our office approaches multi-program initiatives moving forward.

It transformed a one-time deliverable into an ongoing strategic framework.