StratCom-led Communities

StratCom hosts communities of practice for university marketing and communications professionals to deepen their knowledge and expertise while connecting with colleagues across campus units.

Community of Practice	Description	Contact
University Marketing and Communication Advisory Council	Charged by the Office of the Chancellor, UMACAC provides leadership and feedback on university marketing and communications strategies to support university goals. Learn more about UMACAC.	Allison Vance, acvance@illinois.edu
Chief Communications Officers	Academic and outreach units across the Illinois campus identify a chief communications officer for their unit. Learn more about CCO.	Allison Vance, acvance@illinois.edu
Brand Experts Program	The Brand Experts Program is an online professional development opportunity for campus MarCom professionals to learn how to leverage the Illinois brand through messaging, visual and marketing strategies.	brand@illinois.edu
MarCom at Illinois	The MarCom at Illinois Team shares upcoming brand workshops, trainings, events, updates and generic discussions related to university communications and marketing efforts. Open to all campus communicators and marketers, including web developers, designers, writers and social media experts.	stratcom@illinois.edu
Social Media Directors	A network of campus social media professionals that gather to share best practices, resources, emerging trends, and industry updates.	Lea Peck, leapeck2@illinois.edu
Special Events Executive Network	Event planners across the U. of I. are welcome to join SEEN to discuss best practices, policies, processes and more.	Anna Simon, acsimon@illinois.edu
Story Call	This campuswide call takes place once a week. Communicators from CCO units meet to amplify stories for cross-promotional consideration, receive campus updates and hear from other communicators.	Thomas Bruch, bruch2@illinois.edu
Campus Videographers	Open to all campus staff who produce or work with others to produce video. The campus videographers group meets three times a year for workshops and presentations.	E. Todd Wilson, etwilson@illinois.edu
Campus Photographers	This group is open to all photographers — even communicators who include photography in part of their job duties. Workshops are held year-round to help professionals help share expertise.	E. Todd Wilson, etwilson@illinois.edu

Campus-led Communities

Media Monthly: Campus communicators meet monthly to discuss relevant topics and best practices around story pitching, working with local media and more. Meetings occur at 10 a.m. on the second Thursday of each month.

Website Implementation Guidelines Group: WIGG is a collaborative partnership across campuswide web development, information technology, accessibility and design professionals. The group creates website deliverables for broad campus use.

Web Con: This two-day virtual conference brings together web designers, developers, social media marketers, content managers/creators and other web professionals within higher ed and beyond. The conference is planned and led by a dedicated group of volunteers across campus.

Mailing Lists

There are a wide variety of email-based mailing lists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. StratCom manages mailing lists that are relevant to campus communicators.