Story By: Jasmine Taylor
Missouri Western is working hard to continuously improve the communication between the university, Western students and the general public.
One way Western is working toward that is by welcoming PR director Jomel Nichols. Nichols, who previously worked in the marketing industry for 25 years, decided to give the PR position a shot after hearing about the open position. She is now responsible for marketing, internal communications and public relations for Western. Nichols also has experience with financial services.
“My background includes marketing in the private sector for financial services and pension,” Nichols said. “I also have worked on the agency side and, most recently, I worked in client services for SJC Marketing here in St. Joe.”
Nichols is thrilled to be here and is constantly finding ways to collaborate with other units across campus to fulfill the needs of the University. Due to the various meetings being held, Nichols’ day-to-day schedule can get hectic.
“Since I am relatively new, I am spending a lot of time meeting with stakeholders on and off campus to determine what needs there are and how we can best meet them,” Nichols said. “Resources are tight, so I spend a lot of time trying to find ways to collaborate with other units across campus and use our wealth of on-campus talent students, faculty and staff to fulfill those needs.”
The work load can be overwhelming, but with a dependable team, Nichols is able to get the large amount of work done while dashing from meeting to meeting. Nichols works alongside Kent Heier, Diane Holtz, Autumn Sands and student workers. Each individual plays a significant role to keep the university magazine updated, keep the internal communication intact, handling the advertising, as well as the public relations and media.
“The only way I can get anything accomplished is because I have a team here in the department that keeps things humming while I’m dashing from meeting to meeting,” Nichols said. “I love working with these folks because we are small, but mighty. Everyone has a team attitude and we all work together to get projects completed.”
Nichols has many goals she would like to accomplish, one of them being a more reader-friendly format for the employee and student newsletters. It will be a process, but Nichols is determined to make the necessary improvements.
“We will continuously strive to make things better,” Nichols said. “At the moment, we have already switched technology and formatting so the employee and student newsletters now arrive in inboxes in a reader-friendly format that doesn’t require users to click a link to see the information, removing a barrier to entry.”
Nichols and her team are also teaming up with individuals in the IMC and are planning to make changes to the current university website to make it more user friendly. The website will be enhanced solely based on the needs and the content that is necessary for the site.
“We are working with the talented folks over in IMC, in collaboration with the various campus departments and units,” Nichols said. “The next step will be to work with internal resources- writers, videographers, photographers and designers- as well as the departments to come up with the content.”
With the hard work of Nichols and her talented team, Western can expect to see some great and necessary changes in the near future.