Weighing the options for MHCC’s new image

The next step for the President’s Integrated Communications Task Force (PICTF) is to take the feedback from the community input and come up with a branding idea, said Maggie Huffman, co-chair of PICTF and director of communications after campus-wide conversation meetings held in the past week.

PICTF includes many projects such as revamping the websites, both the home page and the portal for a simpler, more streamlined content editing. It also includes wayfinding, which is updating signage and other features around the campus to make navigating the campus easier. The money for the projects was approved by previous budgets, said Huffman.

Revamping the website, both the MHCC home page and the MyMHCC portal, will take place around June or July, said Huffman, and a new website will be up by the beginning of the next school year.

“It’s fundamentally going to change, not just become prettier,” said Cassie McVeety, the vice president of college advancement and executive director to the MHCC Foundation (who announced last week she will soon be leaving the college). It will be more user-based so that prospective students, current students, faculty, etc. will all see something different, she said.

McVeety added there will be much more freedom to edit and make instantaneous updates for different departments by letting the pages be edited by the people in the department and train the faculty to upkeep the website to be more efficient.

Huffman also said they will create a forum in the MyMHCC portal for employees to post personal announcements and socialize, such as letting people know of a garage sale they are holding or inviting people to join on hiking trip.
Google Maps will come out and map out the campus so that there can be an interactive map of the campus for students with smartphones, said Huffman.

Currently, MHCC has no social media regulations so they will also implement some as well and will also create an official MHCC Facebook page.

“This isn’t about forming a new logo and a tag line,” explained Huffman, adding it is recalibration, which will position MHCC as a 21st-century college.
She described it as the “visual presentation of the masterplan,” which is the plans to remodel the area around the Main Mall.

The brand strategy that PICTF and Sockeye, a firm partnering with PICTF on rebranding, are striving toward is “MHCC exists for the success of its community.” They came to that strategy after five stakeholder focus group sessions with students, faculty, staff, board members, high school counselors, and local business partners in January, and 1,499 responses to surveys conducted last fall.

Sockeye co-founder Andy Fraser pointed out that the weaknesses of the college recently are the lack of communication with the community and that there seems to be a “fractured relationship between the faculty and administration.”

The community echoed that the college feels like “faded glory,” said Fraser.
“Over time, we have minimized being integrated in the community,” said Huffman on why the college is using PICTF as an agent of change.

PICTF began in summer 2010, when former President John Sygielski tossed the idea around with a few administration members including current interim President Michael Hay, Huffman, McVeety, and others.

Fraser plans to build deeper roots in the community through business outreach and engage the MHCC community through targeted communications. He would also like to open the campus to the community more.

“There’s a certain part we can facilitate, but we can’t do it for you” said Fraser.

One of the obstacles he mentioned was the changing economy, which affects enrollments and available funds. Another is the constant turnover of students and staff.

“This is the most transitory school I’ve ever worked at. People come and go,” said Fraser about MHCC.

The objective is to revitalize the MHCC brand, connect the college to the community, and garner the support of the community at large, said Fraser.

“Your brand lives in your audience’s perception – branding is what you say about yourself and what other people say about you.”

He said that the college’s personality is warm, confident, creative, and driven, which is “part who we are, and part who we aspire to be.”

For more information on PICTF, anyone may access the meeting agendas and notes and other information of the process under the Resources tab at my.mhcc.edu.

If people are interested in being involved in PICTF, Huffman encourages people to contact her at [email protected].

Advocate Staff