Soon classes will end at colleges and universities across the country, and with that students will enter a summer unlike any other. They’ve already been sent away for weeks from campuses and asked to adapt to online learning, and are left wondering if in-person classes will resume in the fall (among a million other questions). If we thought communicating with them now was tough, wait until the architecture of their engagement with us, even digitally, is gone—as virtual classes come to a halt and built-in interactions with one another and their faculty end.
In other words, the imperative of establishing new communications with students outside the semesterly requirements between now and whenever classes next return, in whatever form, has only grown.
Here are five questions, and a few ideas, to ponder around the role that campus communications offices can play as this risk of an empty summer season arrives:
How can we err on the side of transparency and humanity rather than caution and bureaucracy? Universities, like organizations across society, control very little right now, and the questions ahead are intense: Will campuses open in the fall? Will they still have to operate virtually? What will different approaches cost? And on and on. But the virus is in charge. We have to let families know that we don’t have the answers, share the scenarios being contemplated, and assure them we’ll share what we know—and what we don’t. When fear looms, trust and transparency are even more vital to good relationships.
How can we end the semester with meaningful closure? Let’s not let this semester apart simply drift away. Let’s mark it somehow with an exclamation point. Let’s hold a virtual “we made it” occasion. Let’s write every student a personal email saying, “You did it!” Let’s send them a spirited video montage of alumni of all ages commending them for getting this far. Let’s get a great musician in our faculty and an awesome student who sings to deliver a new song marking what’s just been accomplished. Let’s invite in talents across our campus community—wherever they may be—to remind students of the community that they’ll want to stay part of.
How can we leverage push communications like never before? Let’s use the web, text messages, social media, videos, photos, and all the rest in our toolkits to push creative connections of value, support, information, inspiration, and encouragement like never before. Let’s make clear as the semester ends, and on through the summer, that even from afar, our students can be part of—actually, still are—the life of the university. Through crowdsourcing, let’s help them be the biggest and best part of it. For now, every community is virtual. Campus communications can make it more real for students than almost any other creative force.
But what pull can the university give too? Let’s work with our academic colleagues to draw students in to experiences they won’t want to miss—special courses, skills training, virtual performances, personal guidance, lively interactions with faculty and staff like in no other summer. Let’s share the humanity of our professionals—let’s meet their pets and learn their favorite books and coolest hobbies. Let’s be serious—with thought-provoking lectures—and fun—with quixotic topics and engagements that professors (and alumni and staff…) never get to share otherwise. What other community has access to so many ideas and talents?
How do we invent special community moments students won’t want to miss? What virtual summer “events” can bring many people across our disparate college or university community together? Can we do one a month? Can we run competitions and give prizes—best video song, dance, art gallery, lightning lecture, moment of wisdom? Let’s ask the students themselves, and the faculty, and others, and give that spontaneity and need for human connection a place to go.
These are scary times. The unknowns seem to stretch and deepen by the day. But universities and colleges have capacities to help students meet the moment like no other community. We want them back in the months and years ahead. We want them to know this is a community worth belonging to then, as now. Here, despite—rather, in—the virtual world to which we've all been temporarily banished together, let’s show them why.