Rachel Reuben

It is with great excitement I announce that I have accepted the position of Associate Vice President for Marketing Communications at Ithaca College. I am joining a staff of extremely talented, creative, passionate individuals and will lead the Marketing Communications office to help set priorities for our efforts that align with the College’s strategic direction. We’re about to kick off a brand identity initiative, which many of you know I’ve been integral with in my current position at the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Leaving New Paltz will be bittersweet. I started as an undergraduate transfer student at New Paltz in August 1996, and have been there ever since. I began as an intern in the marketing office in the Campus Auxiliary Services company at New Paltz, did a bit of freelancing to develop many department’s very first Web sites, and then was hired as the College’s first full-time Web professional right after graduation in May 1998. A couple years later I was promoted to Web Coordinator, and then five years later to Director of Web Communication & Strategic Projects. I’ve grown the College’s site from approximately 10 pages to more than 25,000, and have hired two full-time Web Developers to assist with the College’s Web services.

In February 2006 I opened the College’s first Welcome Center, and have continued daily oversight and management of the staff and the Center. I’ve implemented the OmniUpdate Content Management System, two different mass notification systems for emergency alerts, led the College’s social media activity, and have served as an active member of the President’s Brand Marketing Taskforce, and the Emergency Rseponse Team. Last summer I was named Team Lead for the Creative Services Team, which includes the 10 staff members from the Office of Communication & Marketing (media relations, Web services, design services, print services, video services) and Arts Services. In December, I earned my MBA in marketing and management from New Paltz.

My last day at New Paltz will be Friday, June 25 and will begin my new position at Ithaca College on Monday, July 12.

Over on the Intermedia blog, Charlie Melichar recently posted Integration & Separation – print and web. I’d like to expand further on that with my thoughts.

When I was first hired as a Web Editor for a university in 1998, my position was created to re-purpose print documents for the Web. Print drove everything. Twelve years later this is still quite the hot, and rather unresolved, topic. The  transition now seems to be primarily financially driven. Due to budget cuts many are cutting back on printing to save money.

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This morning I presented to a group of ~80 higher education colleagues who work in creative services offices for colleges and universities across the country. My session, Stand Out! Customize Your Institution’s Social Media Presence went beyond yesterdays Social Media 101 session and got under the hood with seven social networking sites to equip these designers with the specs and knowledge needed to customize their college’s presence.

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Whew. Nearly 500 people tuned in to my session, eRecruiting with Social Media and a Purpose this afternoon as part of the CollegeWeekLive/Chronicle of Higher Education eRecruitment Web Forum. There were a ton of questions I didn’t have time to get to during the live presentation (120!!), so I’ve answered the ones I didn’t get to below. Did you miss the live presentation? The folks at CollegeWeekLive have made it available to watch on-demand.

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Last August Facebook gave Pages administrators the ability to publish their Facebook updates to their Twitter accounts automatically. Administrators can decide whether to share updates with their Twitter followers at all, and if so, which type of information to share, such as status updates, links, photos, notes, and events.

This, my friends, is what my friend Chris Brogan has coined “robot activity.” I agree and would go further and say you shouldn’t do it.

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