collegial connections

Rachel Lefkowitz
Special Assistant to the Dean of the School of Education at Mills College

Once, when I lived in Massachusetts, the gas company sent me a flyer with three images on it, asking me which one I thought I’d seen before. I was pretty sure I’d never seen any of them, but I liked the image of the person trudging through the snow, so I checked it. A year later, that image appeared on a notice about how important it is to shovel your sidewalk after a snow storm. I remember this in part because I was right: I had never seen any of the images before; they had been doing market research. But it was also the first time that I saw the results of a survey. Too often, our careful work and deliberate thinking on surveys just fly into the stratosphere of survey-land, never to be heard of again.

Not so at the School of Education. Because of the input we received from faculty, staff, and students to a survey, we have actively changed what we are doing with social media. For example, we learned that more people used LinkedIn (60%) and Google+ (40%) than we had guessed. We’ve increased our posts to LinkedIn, and hope to start a Google+ page soon. Respondents asked for timely event announcements: Now, our Facebook page and Twitter feed should keep you pretty well in the loop. Most importantly, we found that people want to learn more about us on Collegial Connections (42%) and a website (78%). You are here, so you’ve probably already noticed that we are posting more frequently, and Marketing is working with us on a new website.

Everyone who responded stressed that social media at the School of Education should be about promoting what we do and think about professionally –whether that’s professional achievements, links to interesting articles, or events. Social media helps spread the word about what we do at the School of Education, and how we use our degrees or credentials once we leave. It’s how we recruit new students and how we stay connected with each other.

Everyone can help keep our social media vibrant. You may think that your work isn’t newsworthy. But if you let us know that you were just elected your school’s union rep, that you just moved to a new school, or that you got a new job at an agency or hospital, we will share your joy and current and prospective students will see what they can do with their Mills education. If you write a blog post about your work, you may help others with your good ideas. Tell us about an article you just read and loved, with a one-sentence frame about why you found it interesting or helpful. Send us an inspirational quote. Everything is important!

This means, if you are lucky, one day I’ll write a post about the intricacies of databases. In the meantime, please send your ideas to soemedia@mills.edu.