The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) is introducing a new communications office aiming to make students more aware of CUSA programs and events.
“We realized that we were not investing enough as an association in such to be able to engage the way we want to and have as many students engaged with our content, our services, and our events,” said CUSA president Fahd Alhattab.
“We developed a model on how would be the best way to go about furthering student engagement and we realized a communications office was going to be key to that,” he said.
Alhattab said the office will be responsible for promoting events through mailing lists, advertising, and social media.
“The more students know about our events, the more students know about the campaigns we are running, the higher level we’ll get in turnout,” Alhattab said. “So we’re working on that directly and track and use a lot of data on our communications to see how we are doing—how do students engage with our content and using that data to improve our engagement and improve.”
Clubs and societies will benefit from the communications office by being able to submit a publication form to advertise their events on CUSA’s social media platforms and website, he said. The office will also create two new paid internship positions for students.
“We have a lot of different faculties and different groups on campus that come to us as an association and wanting us to help them reach more students. We’re the hub for students as CUSA and it’s something that’s very exciting,” Alhattab said.
Hannah Kilby, a third-year journalism student, said she thinks the office will help CUSA reach more students.
“Social media is used as a time killer in society, especially the typical university age group. So the events will be more visible,” she said. “It’s just a matter of getting followers as some students might not want event marketing on their wall or feed.”
The office will create student jobs including communications co-ordinator, a yearbook position, and a graphic design intern, which will help support CUSA service centres and executives. The positions were advertised to students on CUSA’s website.
“To say that they worked for a student association that oversees $8 million and runs four businesses and 12 service centres is a fantastic thing to put on your resume and something that really helps theses students grow. The experience is very valuable,” Alhattab said.
This is the first time CUSA will have a communications office, he said. The roles in the communications office will build off of previous communications positions at CUSA, including a brand co-ordinator.
“We’ve taken lessons from years past of executives that have been okay but maybe failed at developing what this looked like, and we’ve kind of expanded on it and put in a lot more resources to establish a really long-term goal for a strong communications through CUSA,” Alhattab said.
Alhattab said about $15,000 more will be put towards communications than in previous years, with some of that money being reallocated from special projects budgets. CUSA executives previously received discretionary funds for additional projects. These have been cut and used in part to fund the communications office, Alhattab explained.
“Increasing our reach is going to help increase all the services we do for clubs, service centres, and the executives,” Alhattab said.
