With much excitement, the University Communicator Network announces the first CommCon 2026 in mid-June. Now in the early planning stages, this university-wide summit will feature keynote and breakout sessions geared toward helping you in all stages of communication. All faculty, staff and students are welcome to attend.

Experts will lead sessions on crafting effective emails, planning and marketing events, using tools like Adobe Express, Widen and more.

Your assistance is needed! We are looking for volunteers to serve on logistics, scheduling, and communications/marketing subcommittees. Please connect with Michele Coffill, coffillm@gvsu.edu, for questions or to lend your assistance.

Watch for a call for session proposals before the end of the fall semester.

Ahead of Thanksgiving, we are giving thanks for all our GVSU communicators who share messages and engage audiences! 

Here are recent top-notch communication examples:

We hope you enjoyed Valerie Garcia's October 16 presentation on storytelling. 

A seasoned communicator and author, Garcia discussed how to move from traditional marketing to story-focused communications. Her slides — and previous UCN presentations — are available to download by logging in with your GVSU username/password. 

Both Institutional Advancement and University Communications received awards in the Best of CASE District V competition. Congratulations on great work for these communications pieces:

Institutional Advancement's annual giving team received an award for its Student Philanthropy Week campaign in the regular/annual giving category. The campaign exceeded its goal, securing 292 donors and raising over $20,000 for campus funds, strengthening donor engagement and the philanthropic spirit at GVSU.

University Communications staff Cory Morse, Kendra Stanley-Mills and Brian Vernellis received awards for, respectively, the following:

Crisis Communications / Freedom of Information Act 101