The Office of Communications and Marketing provides integrated marketing capabilities to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The staff members have knowledge, experience, and specialized skills in a broad array of communications methods that they use to build public support and understanding of the missions of the College. All the individuals are members of national professional organizations, which help keep them abreast of major agricultural and life sciences trends and understand how Virginia Tech research and educational programs impact national and global concerns. The group's activities are developed and focused on priorities and strategic plans of both the College and the university.

Media Relations

Media relations activities include producing news and informational articles that tell audiences about the College programs. Staff members who prepare these materials seek out topics that will reflect the College emphases as well as fulfill the needs of the mass communications media. They seek to accurately portray the many facets of the College. All stories are available to the media and the general public through the Virginia Tech news website and the College website. Selected stories are distributed directly to targeted media outlets through the University's News Bureau. Media relations team members also make personal contacts with reporters, editors, and producers to facilitate accurate reporting about the College and its programs.

Promotional and Educational Materials

Staff members provide graphic design, illustration, layout, editing, proofreading, Web design and project management services. Promotional and educational materials activities include producing a wide variety of pieces ranging from straight-forward fact sheets to complex technical manuals and include full-color promotional materials, administrative reports, and other communications pieces for specific events and high profile programs. Nearly 300 individual products are created in a typical year.

Training

Our team regularly offer training sessions to help college faculty and staff improve their own skills in newsletter production and publicity and public relations, including workshops to learn to interact with the media, best practices in crisis communications, improve marketing efforts, and assess programming.