Communications
Employee Communications
Internal communications is crucial in the College of Medicine. Communicating internally helps to keep our employees and students informed and engaged about everything that is going on in our college.
The best way to reach our employees and students is through The COMmunicator, the dedicated internal communications newsletter. Have a great story or announcement for The COMmunicator? Submit it using the Workfront form below.
Proactive Media and Crisis Communications
The communications and media team members provide oversight and direction for College of Medicine issues of reputational significance to create integrated communications strategies and positive approaches to promoting institutional goals. This team proactively identifies needs, researches and leads communications strategy and coordinates execution across multiple colleges, units and partners. They serve as a key liaison for internal and external stakeholders to ensure that the communications strategy is integrated with the university. This team is also the primary responder and lead for crisis communications and key issues across the college.
Media and Public Relations
The communications team offers media relations’ support and coordination acting as a conduit between external media outlets and the institution. With access to patient health information (PHI) is very important that the media team be involved anytime media is present. This protects our faculty and students and ultimately the college and university. The media relations team enhances the reputation and visibility of the College of Medicine, fosters accuracy and generates goodwill through daily work with local, regional, national and international media. The media relations team also feeds content to Penn State News and Penn State Health News. The media relations team responds to media inquiries and can assist with finding faculty experts, filming requests or escorting media on campus.
If the media reaches out to you directly, please contact our office and we will assist in coordination. Please do not speak on behalf of the organization without contacting our office.
The COMmunicator Editorial Policy
Overview
The COMmunicator is Penn State College of Medicine’s internal newsletter that is distributed to faculty, staff and students each Tuesday.
Submissions and Content
College of Medicine-specific submissions must be sent through the COMmunictor internal news submission form. Individuals will not be contacted following their submission unless The COMmunicator editorial team requires additional information.
The submission deadline for the Tuesday edition is the Wednesday before the publication date. (For example: The deadline for the Tuesday, Feb. 21 edition is Wednesday, Feb. 15.)
Content that appears in The COMmunicator should be broadly relevant to all College of Medicine audiences, which include faculty, staff and students.
Sections generally include operational topics such as human resources, leadership announcements and events. All research-related news, updates and events are published in the monthly Discovery Digest newsletter. If you do not already receive Discovery Digest, click here to sign up.
Events will not be published in The COMmunicator unless they have first been submitted to the College of Medicine’s central events calendar. Click here for information on how to access/submit events to the calendar. Additionally, The COMmunicator does not list events more than two weeks in advance of the event date.
Submitted content may be used in The COMmunicator, on Penn State websites and across social media channels.
Content Approval
Content submitted for The COMmunicator is reviewed by an editorial team within the College of Medicine’s Office of Strategic Marketing and Communications. The editorial team reserves the right to decline publication if an item does not meet editorial guidelines. The editorial team also makes scheduling and publication decisions based on various factors, including relevant dates, other planned content and College communications, other internal communication tools such as email proxies, etc.
Images
The COMmunicator editorial team generally follows the guidelines used by Penn State News editors. The image policy can be found here under “Photo guidelines.”