Communications Manager

At UBC, we believe that attracting and sustaining a diverse workforce is key to the successful pursuit of excellence in research, innovation, and learning for all faculty, staff and students. Our commitment to employment equity helps achieve inclusion and fairness, brings rich diversity to UBC as a workplace, and creates the necessary conditions for a rewarding career.

This position is a key position within the Okanagan School of Education (OSE). This position provides strategic input and leadership, while developing, researching, overseeing and implementing plans and operations that advance the Okanagan School of Education’s strategic communications goals.

This position is responsible for developing, designing and executing a full-range of communications to enhance the image and reputation of the OSE at the local, provincial, national and global level. This position provides writing, design, publishing, videography, photography and editing skills to promote the OSE's research and scholarship activities, and undergraduate, graduate and post-baccalaureate programs. This position creates and develops communications best practices for the OSE and ensures that all communications activities and collateral materials comply with UBC brand standards.

This position is responsible for the promotion of all events on and off campus, using digital, print and social media mediums. They work closely with OSE faculty, staff and students to understand their events, create promotional plans, and create the content and materials required. This could involve working with external stakeholders and partners. The positions also attends events to provide photography and/or videography support and creates content to share across OSE channels including social media and website.

News and story development is a primary responsibility of this position, who works closely with OSE faculty and staff to identify opportunities that may be of public interest. This position creates, edits and promotes the content, which could take the form of media releases, written articles, Q&As, social media posts, videos, etc.

This position reports directly to the OSE Director, with administrative supervision from the Manager, Administration and Operations. This position works as part of the Okanagan School of Education team and interacts with faculty, staff, students, alumni and colleagues within the Faculty of Education on the Vancouver campus. In addition, this position works closely with University Relations, faculty communicators and other campus departments such as Enrolment Services, Alumni and Development.

Communications Strategy and Planning:

Develops comprehensive communications and marketing strategy identifying key opportunities to improve the organization’s existing communications activities.

Works with OSE leadership to identify and clarify goals, design objectives and to determine project timelines and budgets.

Develops and maintains a departmental marketing and communications plan and associated strategies for increasing enrolment of undergraduate, post- baccalaureate and graduate programs

Creates, implements and evaluates a content strategy and portfolio that includes websites, social media, online ad campaigns and other online assets.

Manages projects and coordinates workflow of content providers, editors, designers and external services.

Makes independent decisions and recommendations in areas of prioritizing, planning, and organization of OSE communications and provides strategic recommendations to OSE leadership regarding opportunities to further our reach to prospective audiences.

Creates, revises and maintains a variety of messaging such as articles, reports, videos, photos, brochures and/or manuals.

Coordinates, maintains and develops marketing and promotional materials.

Develops promotional strategies, projects and public events including researching other Universities for best practices

Evaluates the effectiveness and impact of marketing and communications plans and recommends improvements

Recognition & Planning:

Ensures collaborative recognition and publicity of the OSE by communicating and marketing upcoming events, awards and opportunities for students, faculty and the general public.

Researches and interviews faculty, staff and students, to prepare material to promote their research accomplishments

Media Relations:

Actively creates and seeks out media opportunities to raise the School’s profile.

Prepares press releases and publicity materials.

Presents stories to media in collaboration with University Relations.

Coordinates the announcement and promotion of major honours and distinctions in conjunction with external award agencies.

Reviews, proofs, and fact-checks copy, and providing layout-ready copy according to style guide specifications.

Social Media:

Coordinates, maintains and generates information for the OSE’s social media channels including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Responds to questions and comments posted on social media channels

Is the "voice" of the OSE; engages with internal and external education community to raise awareness of the OSE.

Monitors social media channels and identifies risks and issues that may arise

Researches and recommends new social media channels and approaches.

Monitors statistics of social media accounts.

Stays current with latest trends and best practices in social media.

Content Generation:

Researches, writes, edits and produces content for communication media including web communications, digital signage, print materials, reports and social media.

Responsible for the creation of graphic design and illustration in support of online, print and digital projects to reinforce the brand of the OSE and its projects.

Conceives, develops and determines the online visual identity for OSE.

Designs print promotional materials including brochures, posters, guidebooks, and signage.

Takes photographs of events, portraits, and activities for the various communications vehicles connected to OSE, includes Photoshop retouching.

Conceives, develops and distributes videos and animations marketed at promoting the OSE to internal and external audiences.

Manages the archiving of all departmental media including the scheduled backups of photos, videos, MP3s, and websites.

Manages other small to mid-sized marketing projects and initiatives as opportunities arise:

Develops project timelines and schedules, develops cost projections and advises the Dean, Associate Dean and Director in a timely manner on progress of all current projects.

Manages project budgets and ensures determined timelines are met.

Serves on an inter-campus advisory board or cross-unit committees when required.

Undertakes other communication projects in keeping with the mandate of the position.

Web Management:

Ensures that the OSE website and digital signage content is accurate, clear, timely and consistent both in messaging and presentation. Develop/change processes as required.

Maintains quality assurance and make a coordinated approach to communications content, ensuring integration across print and web/social media and digital signage. Specifically, writes and manages web content including graphics, photos, video and digital signage.

Serves as the main contact person with content providers and external marketing consultants.

Prepares, reviews and edits documentation and messaging in preparation for public posting on the website; responsible for establishing consistency with usage of the UBC logo and other online initiatives that use the UBC brand.

Maintains web content style guides, standards and templates in compliance with UBC standards and best practices.

Researches web/social media technologies and makes recommendations. Based on findings, communicates risks/issues for project requirements.

Implements and monitors web analytics to measure progress and usage.

Liaises with University Relations on web technologies to further OSE’s communication strategies

Performs other related duties as directed.

Must be able to work independently and exercise extensive judgement and decision-making. This position must exercise tact and diplomacy when dealing with students, staff, faculty, alumni, community partners, media and the public. They must make decisions on how best to manage projects given short timeframes, relative strategic importance of projects, ease of substituting one project for another given staffing available, and the impact of failing to meet deadlines. The quality, ethics, integrity, and accuracy of communication materials produced by this position are critical to the School of Education, given the wide distribution of these materials throughout the University and across the country, inappropriate or inaccurate statements may seriously affect the image and reputation of individuals or the School of Education and the University as a whole. Incomplete or inaccurate information; ineffectual or poor messaging in communication content could result in lower enrollment, lower quality of faculty recruitment, poor fundraising or negative perception of the University s academic record.

SUPERVISION RECEIVED

Works autonomously within board mandates to meet goals, and according to direction received from the Director, with administrative supervision from the Manager, Administration & Operations.

May supervise Work/Study students. This individual may oversee the work of internal and external service providers, and on occasion may delegate event, web and social media updating/editing tasks to OSE support staff.