Content and Editorial

Overview

This weekly e-newsletter for the College of Arts and Sciences is published each Wednesday afternoon (with occasional exceptions for holiday schedules). It features timely research news, events, experts and accomplishments in the college. Around the Oval is issued to all Arts and Sciences faculty and staff on the main campus and regional campuses, along with key contacts at the university.

The deadline for content submissions is Friday at noon (Please keep in mind all submissions are subject to review). 

What is included in Around the Oval?

• Key news items
• Research news and publications
• Faculty, staff and student awards (national, international, university, college, discipline)
• Featured events
• Faculty, staff or student expert citations in media. Submissions come from University Communications media updates, chairs, faculty, staff and students (does not include personal, op-ed pieces)

Submit an item to Around the Oval

If you would like to subscribe, please complete the online form or send an email to asccomm@osu.edu.

This weekly e-newsletter distributed on Tuesdays shares important internal announcements and updates for faculty, staff and graduate students in the College of Arts and Sciences. It also shares resources, opportunities and calls for nominations or applications for awards, memberships, grants, etc.

The deadline for content submissions is Friday at noon (Please keep in mind all submissions are subject to review).

Submit an item to Administrative Updates

Submit an event for the Arts and Sciences calendar

Free Online Calendars

Spread the word — there are several free online calendars available for your use.

Columbus Underground
Columbus-centric blog with a focus on city development, art, culture and lifestyle
columbusunderground.com/events (no account/password required)

Columbus Dispatch
dispatch.com/calendar

Columbus Monthly
Local magazine focused on arts, culture and local news. This also informs content for their print calendar.
Free account sign-up required.
columbusmonthly.com/things-to-do/events/?_evDiscoveryPath=/

Columbus Parent
Quarterly publication with frequent online updates serving Central Ohio families.
columbusparent.com/calendar

NBC4
Local NBC affiliate. Free account sign-up required.
A note on other TV outlets: their online calendars are fed by contacting their editorial desk.
nbc4i.com/calendar#!/

Ohio Event Finder
Online database of arts and cultural events in Ohio. It feeds event calendars throughout the state, including Ohio.org and ArtsInOhio.org. This is open only to groups presenting arts and culture events open to the public. 
Free account sign-up required.
ohioeventfinder.com/useres/sign_in

Experience Columbus
experiencecolumbus.com/events/submit-an-event

onCampus Today and onCampus Weekly are e-newsletters that are great vehicles to share your news items with wider university faculty, staff and student audiences.

To share a news item for consideration in onCampus Today or onCampus Weekly, complete the submission form. Provide a suggested headline, brief descriptive text and a link to an appropriate webpage where the news item is found. You can also indicate the nature of the news item, which publications it should appear in and a desired publication date.

While submitting a news item does not guarantee it will be published, all items are considered.

There are many opportunities to market specific courses across the university. It’s best to start thinking about this process as soon as you can, and to build on each semester’s efforts to the best of your ability. We suggest starting to think about your plans in August for the October registration window, and in January for the March registration window.

If you’d like to strategize in more detail, or you have questions or need another set of eyes on your materials, please don’t hesitate to reach out to the MarComm team via the “strategy consultation” option in the project request form.

Some general points to keep in mind throughout include:

• Be specific. Course numbers are important for registration, but usually don’t tell students what the course is about. Use course names and try to ensure that course names accurately reflect course content as much as possible.
• Be creative. Official course descriptions can be dry and are often difficult to parse for students outside of specific majors. Your marketing descriptions can be fun and should be conversational while maintaining an accurate overall impression of course content.
  • Example: FRIT 3061 Mediterranean Food Cultures
    • Course description: Considering it more than a biological necessity, this course approaches food as a way of approaching a region's cultures in an ever-changing world of human and environmental interactions and explores how concerns over agricultural sustainability thus translate into concerns over cultural specificity. Students will examine Mediterranean cuisines through literature, film, music, and social media. Prereq: Not open to students with credit for 2061 or Italian 2061. GE cultures and ideas and diversity global studies course. GE theme lived environments and sustainability course.
    • Marketing copy: What do bacalhau, falafel, moussaka, paella, ratatouille, spanakopita and tabbaouleh have in common? Find out next semester in FRIT 3061: Mediterranean Food Culture
• Be inclusive. If the course fulfills a general education requirement, tell students which one. If the course cuts across departments, include all course numbers in your materials.

It is not recommended to market more than 3-5 specific courses per semester. Trust that one interesting or intriguing course can draw students to the rest of your course catalog. You can also experiment with different types of courses (intro classes, gen ed courses, upper-level courses or a mix of all of these) each semester to see what works best for your offerings.

Course marketing ingredients

• Course name and number(s)
• Course description
• Course visuals – this could be photos from a lab course or field-based class, or a photo or illustration that’s relevant to the course content
• University or department requirements that are fulfilled by this course – this could be general education requirements or major electives, for example
• Templates: templates for slides, posters and other materials are available on the Arts and Sciences Intranet at ascintranet.osu.edu/marcomm/brand.
• Optional: student quotes about the course

Department website

Courses can be featured on your department website in a number of ways.

• The homepage’s top banner can include a single course or a reference to multiple courses, along with a matching background image and buttons to the appropriate courses page.
• Feature rows on the homepage reside under the hero image slideshow and can be used in a similar manner (see the college homepage, for example).
• Smaller website modules can also be set up to feature course offerings or specific classes; reach out to ASC Web Services for assistance.
• A “featured courses” news item on the homepage can direct students to a single course listing or include a collection of 3-5 featured courses. This is an excellent opportunity to include student quotes about how they liked the course or what they learned from it – instructors may be able to help with finding students most likely to offer good quotes.

Department outreach

Course marketing content can be included in most of the channels you already use to reach out to students, whether that’s social media, emails, flyers or digital screens. Always include a call to action such as “register today” along with a link that helps students do just that – the closer you can get them to the actual course registration without skipping information they may need to make a decision, the better.

If the course is listed in multiple departments, don’t forget to share your marketing content with those departments as well. You can also reach out to other departments whose focus might include your course – a political science class may also work well for history or sociology majors, for example.

Instructors in related classes and departments may also be willing to include a slide advertising your course at the beginning of a lecture, if it’s built and ready to go. Targeted emails to faculty and lecturers teaching these classes, with the slide attached and a suggestion to share with their students, can be a great way to expand your reach.

Department social media

In addition to regular posts and stories about your featured courses, you could consider:

• Student-created videos where students talk about what they liked about the course. They can submit these via OneDrive or email for you to post on your accounts.
• A few recorded questions with the course instructor, who can talk about exciting course content, artifacts or experiments students will be working on during the semester, or how the class applies to current events or future careers.
• Student-created projects from previous semesters – this is especially impactful in art or music courses, but could also include a short overview of a client presentation for a marketing class or a research poster from a science or culture class.

You can tag the relevant Arts and Sciences accounts, found at the bottom of the homepage, in your post or a comment/thread to increase your potential reach and request amplification.

Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Newsletter

Ann Rottersman, Director of Student Programs, manages the monthly newsletter for undergraduates in the College of Arts and Sciences, which includes a program spotlight in most issues. Submission information and a newsletter archive are available at artsandsciences.osu.edu/current-students/undergraduate-students/beyond-classroom/getting-involved/undergrad-newsletter.

Digital Screens

Requests for the digital screens in Thompson Library run through the Lib Thompson Library Monitor Graphics team in Teams – contact Pam McClung, Senior Graphic and Motion Designer at University Libraries, at mcclung.26@osu.edu to be added. 

Digital signage for the Ohio Union and other university spaces can be submitted to Student Life via the instructions at activities.osu.edu/posts/documents/digital-signage-external-guidelines-final-on-template.pdf.

Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications

While MarComm generally does not provide support for individual course marketing, we may be interested in courses that include hands-on components, field work, travel or community engagement for storytelling purposes. You can submit story pitches through the project inquiry form by selecting “content and editorial” in the “Request details” checkboxes.

Add to your unit’s events calendar

All events should have a “home” on the sponsoring unit's website. This is where other outlets will link to, and where you’ll keep information for attendees updated. Each event should include: 

• a date and time
• a location
• a short informational blurb about the event
• a registration link (optional but recommended)

Additional content could include: 

• a speaker bio or bios
• a link to other events in a series
• travel and parking information

If multiple units are connected to the event, one website can serve as the event’s “home base,” while the other unit calendars link to that event page.

Post on your unit’s social media accounts

Public and open events should be shared on the unit’s social media accounts, with a link back to the event page for more details. You can tag the relevant Arts and Sciences accounts, found at the bottom of the homepage, in your post or a comment/thread to request inclusion in college social media. On Facebook, you can also create a Facebook event and add the college account as a co-host.

** Please note that screenshots of flyers and images with a lot of text do not make for good social media content and can violate accessibility guidelines. It’s always better to use one impactful image and then provide basic information like the event title, speaker, date, time and location in the post text.

Share with other units

Is your event relevant to other units? For example, an event in history may also be of interest to attendees connected to political science or the Mershon Center. You can reach out to the unit’s general email, administrative assistant or a personal connection and ask about being included in their website’s events calendar and other communications.

Share with the College of Arts and Sciences

Submit your event at the online form or via the “share news and events” options above. This puts the information into the queue for potential inclusion in the weekly Around the Oval external newsletter, the weekly Administrative Updates internal newsletter, the college events calendar on the Arts and Sciences website, the monthly alumni newsletter, social media and/or the digital screens in University Hall.

** Please keep in mind all submissions are subject to review; submission does not guarantee inclusion.

Share with the university

Via onCampus

Free events that are open to all university affiliates can be submitted to onCampus via their Workfront form. Select the blue “new request” button in the top right and then “OMC – onCampus Story Submission” in the dropdown menu. onCampus is sent to faculty and staff on most business days, and to undergraduate and graduate students weekly on most Tuesdays.

** Please note that onCampus requires the use of paid advertising for events that charge admission or registration fees. More information is available from OMC.

Via digital screens

Requests for the digital screens in Thompson Library run through the Lib Thompson Library Monitor Graphics team in Teams – contact Pam McClung, Senior Graphic and Motion Designer at University Libraries, at mcclung.26@osu.edu to be added. 

Digital signage for the Ohio Union and other university spaces can be submitted to Student Life via the instructions at activities.osu.edu/posts/documents/digital-signage-external-guidelines-final-on-template.pdf.

Share with external audiences

If your event is open to the entire university, you could also submit it to:

• student organizations
• Suzanne Bressoud, bressoud.2@osu.edu, the content strategist in the Office of Academic Affairs: Her team produces newsletters for faculty, OAA staff, Undergraduate Education, the graduate school and the Drake Institute.

If your event is open to the public, you could submit it to:

• local media outlets: A suggested list of events calendars is available above under the Event Submission accordion.
• relevant professional organizations and societies: This is especially applicable to virtual events, but may also be a good fit for smaller groups or local chapters of national organizations.
• other local groups: Would this event be of interest to the German Village Society? Local Girl Scout troops? A neighborhood Chamber of Commerce? It’s OK to get creative in your outreach as long as the event truly is relevant to a specific group.

Definitions

Digital Screen

A digital screen is any digital signage (such as a television or monitor) used to display information in public spaces relating to the College of Arts and Sciences. The College of Arts and Sciences currently maintains five digital screens in University Hall.

Layout

A layout is the individual content displayed on a digital screen. Examples include (but are not limited to) event promotion, news stories or resources for students.

Digital Screen Lead

This is the lead for all digital screens associated with the College of Arts and Sciences: Braden Moles, Senior Content Specialist, Arts and Sciences Marketing and Communications, moles.13@osu.edu.

Digital Screen Manager

A digital screen manager is anyone who manages a digital screen in any capacity on behalf of a university-affiliated entity. While “digital screen” may not be in your title, if it is one of your assigned duties, you are considered a digital screen manager.

Digital Screen Policies

Arts and Sciences Digital Screen Content Requests

As a matter of policy, outside submissions for digital screens are not currently accepted. However, the digital screens will periodically highlight marquee events for the College of Arts and Sciences based on the college’s online events calendar. Events can be submitted for inclusion in the calendar via the intranet submission form. 

To verify if an event will be included on digital screens or to request an event’s inclusion on digital screens, contact the digital screens lead. If the digital screens lead deems that the event is appropriate and is able to accommodate your request, your event will be added to the content calendar.

Arts and Sciences Digital Screen Best Practices

When creating content for unit-owned digital screens, the College of Arts and Sciences has developed several best practices for digital screen managers.

• When scheduling content for digital screens, have no more than 10 layouts in rotation at a given time to allow content ample time to be highlighted.
• Layouts should be displayed between 15 and 30 seconds, and digital screen managers should avoid text-heavy layouts.
• All layouts must follow brand guidelines. Layout templates for digital screens are available on the College of Arts and Sciences intranet.
• Short videos can be included on digital screens but must include subtitles for accessibility if applicable.
• Include QR code for tracking if applicable to assess effectiveness of digital screens and specific layouts.
• Review screen content regularly and remove outdated layouts as soon as possible.

Online newsletters are a cost-effective way to post and share department, center and program news with alumni and other stakeholders.

The newsletter content lives on the unit's website, and Marketing and Communications can partner in developing an email to stakeholders (alumni, donors, etc.) to drive traffic to the content. Online newsletters are created and managed by the unit, but they will send the articles to Marketing and Communications for content review before an email will be built for distribution. If units would like to share the newsletter with their alumni, our office will manage sending through Salesforce per university standards.

To access the online newsletter module, units can request training from ASCTech.

More website videos

• University name: We are The Ohio State University on first reference, Ohio State on second. We are not "OSU" because the Ohio State name has greater awareness and familiarity than OSU. Geography is a factor, too, as there are multiple OSUs out there, and the web doesn't stop with Ohio's boundaries. Never refer to "Ohio State University," "the Ohio State University," or "THE Ohio State University." Don't capitalize “university” when used alone.
• College name: We are the College of Arts and Sciences. "The" is not part of the college name and is not capitalized, and "and" is always spelled out; do not replace it with an ampersand. Arts and Sciences is acceptable on second reference. Use caution with the ASC acronym — while it can be valuable shorthand for internal audiences, it may lead to confusion to audiences outside of the college. Don't capitalize "college" when used alone.
• Commas: Ohio State follows AP style, and as such, we do not use Oxford/serial commas unless needed for clarity.
• Time: Use numerals in all cases and omit the zeros for on-the-hour times. Use periods for a.m. and p.m. To avoid confusion, use noon and midnight instead of 12 p.m. and 12 a.m. Examples: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. / 1-3 p.m. / 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Formal titles: Capitalize formal titles when they immediately precede a name: President Barack Obama, Professor Betty George. In text matter, titles following a personal name or used alone in place of a name are lowercased. Examples: Professor John Smith ate an apple. John Smith, professor of history, ate an apple.
• Doctor: In general, for news content, use "Dr." only in first reference as a formal title before the name of an individual who is a medical doctor, but do not use "Dr." when referring to someone with a PhD or other doctoral degree.
• Departments: Capitalize the full, formal names of departments, but lowercase shortened or informal versions. Examples: He is a professor in the Department of History. He is a professor in history.
• Academic degrees: Capitalize the main words in the full names of degrees when they are spelled out and capitalize abbreviations of degrees. Abbreviation of the degree name is acceptable on first reference: BA, MA, PhD, etc.
• Book titles, magazine titles, etc.: Titles of books, magazines and newspapers appear in italics, without quotation marks. Titles of book chapters, magazine articles and peer-reviewed papers appear in quotation marks.