College of Arts and Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
August 2024 – May 2025 | Strategy Team Lead, Communications Office
Institutional Context
The College of Arts and Sciences is the largest and most academically diverse college at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville—the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee System, which includes institutions such as UT Chattanooga and UT Martin. As part of a land-grant, research-intensive university, the college serves a wide spectrum of internal and external audiences, including faculty, students, administrators, alumni, and community partners.
Overview
As the first and most academically diverse college on the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee, the College of Arts and Sciences needed a stronger, more unified approach to strategic communication. Our charge: align messaging across dozens of departments, improve internal communication, and elevate the visibility of research, faculty, and student stories.
In August 2024, we launched the Strategy Team—a focused unit within the Communications Office tasked with building the systems, content strategies, and cross-functional processes needed to move our college forward.
The Challenge: Turning Strategic Needs into Actionable Systems
Our team began with a clear mission: to operationalize the College’s strategic communication priorities. These goals emerged from a recognized need to:
– Improve internal communication across academic departments
– Strengthen faculty visibility
– Elevate the visibility of research and scholarship
– Increase student engagement and recruitment support
– Foster community outreach and partnership alignment
– Promote consistent, measurable brand storytelling
To meet these challenges, we applied a hybrid approach that combined the clarity and structure of systems thinking with the empathy and creativity of design thinking—ensuring every initiative addressed both institutional needs and user experience.
Our Approach: Building Communication Systems with Strategy and Empathy
We structured our work around seven strategic communication priorities—defined at the outset of the academic year to address longstanding gaps in visibility, engagement, and internal alignment. Each priority served as a foundation for initiatives built with scalability, usability, and long-term value in mind. These focus areas are relevant and adaptable for any liberal arts institution aiming to strengthen its communication systems.
Internal Communication Infrastructure
– Built and maintained a centralized internal communications hub
– Developed department-level pages and dynamic news feeds
– Standardized email templates and streamlined distribution workflows
– Ran internal awareness campaigns to encourage platform adoption
Faculty & Staff Engagement
– Produced spotlight stories and updated faculty profiles
– Launched a recruitment toolkit with ready-to-use materials
– Centralized key forms and resources to improve onboarding and collaboration
Research Visibility
– Featured funding opportunities and faculty work in newsletters and digital stories
– Supported research-focused events through coordinated content and promotion
– Developed a plan for sustained research storytelling across platforms
Student Engagement
– Created and distributed branded recruitment toolkits
– Promoted courses via digital signage, newsletters, and targeted campaigns
– Began developing a student storytelling program to capture authentic voices
Community Outreach
– Partnered with the advancement office and alumni to produce outreach-driven content
– Highlighted community-engaged research in college-wide publications
Recruitment Strategy
– Designed print and digital toolkit materials to support recruitment goals
– Aligned messaging with recruitment teams to ensure consistency across channels
Brand Awareness
– Collaborated with an external branding firm to refine the college’s positioning
– Standardized storytelling formats and visual identity elements
– Reimagined the college’s feature publication to reflect strategic brand goals
Results & Highlights
Our first academic year as a Strategy Team directly addressed the goals we set—and delivered measurable, high-value outcomes:
– 1 college-wide intranet launched and adopted across divisions
– 24 departments integrated into the CAS Hub structure
– 1,200+ unique viewers and 11,000+ page views on CAS Hub in academic year one
– 5+ recruitment and resource toolkits created
– Updated form system implemented to streamline content submissions and internal collaboration
– Decrease in event promotion requests following the rollout of a centralized toolkit
– Improved content tracking: for the first time, we now know how many stories we’re telling, and about what
– Strategic goal-setting introduced across communication functions where none previously existed
– Increased alignment between content, advancement, and divisional teams
What We Learned
– Systems thinking creates sustainability—strategy must be built into infrastructure
– Design thinking ensures solutions are useful, intuitive, and engaging
– Communication outcomes are stronger when tools, templates, and stories are planned and interconnected
– Creating shared language and aligned workflows builds organizational clarity
– Every audience interaction is an opportunity to reinforce brand and mission
What’s Next
As we close out our first full academic year, our focus shifts to evaluating outcomes and expanding success:
– Launching a student storytelling program
– Developing performance metrics and feedback systems
– Formalizing SEO strategy and metrics gathering
– Building a long-term strategy for community engagement content