A Steady Drumbeat of Information

Crisis communications is nothing new to the university’s Marketing Communications team. Following established protocols, the senior public relations professional is the “comms” lead when crises arise, and cross-functional teams of subject matter experts and decision makers align based on the situation. Team members drew on all of their crisis management experience as they became among the earliest and longest-serving members of WPI’s Coronavirus Emergency Response Team (CERT).

The scale and scope of the global pandemic was unlike any crisis even the most experienced communicator had managed before. Accordingly, it required the collective effort of the team’s diverse talents to create and distribute meaningful and relevant content about a rapidly changing situation in a variety of modes on a variety of platforms for a variety of audiences for more than a year.

“Nothing about COVID comms has been one and done, but we’re a stronger team—and better at our craft—for having worked our way through it,” says Maureen Deiana, vice president and chief marketing officer. “From a crisis communications perspective, we’ve had to clearly and steadily communicate need-to-know information and provide ways to learn more and to get questions answered. And everything else we created or promoted needed to weave in COVID messaging to reflect the realities of living and learning during a pandemic. The visuals and stories we published connected those working from home to a still-productive campus—and showed the public the same, which was essential to instilling confidence that WPI was prepared and performing despite the pandemic.”

Effective communication always requires knowing the key messages, and central to WPI messaging was its North Star: to keep the community safe and healthy. Equally important was keeping the community together—whether virtually or on campus (with faces covered and socially distanced)—in service to students and each other with care and respect, and, as much as possible, to serve the broader community.

That tone was set by President Laurie Leshin and repeated at each of the 17 employee virtual town halls she led from the spring of 2020 through the summer of 2021—a critical communication platform that consistently engaged hundreds of faculty, staff, and students to tune in as the president shared what she knew, explained the university’s actions, and grounded everything in science and data. The meetings were recorded, were available online, and were generally followed by an email communication to document decisions and share information. Across the university, other offices hosted town halls for targeted audiences; President Leshin also connected directly with families and alumni.

“In her role as WPI’s president, Laurie Leshin is distinctive—and especially relatable to this community—because she is also a scientist with remarkable communications skills,” says Eileen Brangan Mell, assistant vice president of public relations and strategic communications and the MarComm team’s constant presence on CERT. “Throughout the pandemic, the WPI community benefited from President Leshin’s leadership, authenticity, humanity, and her ability to inspire confidence by reinforcing that WPI was managing this crisis guided by science, data, and a deep commitment to doing the right things.

“She’s always done fall and spring meetings in person—moving the town halls to virtual on a monthly basis gave the community a critical and consistent touchpoint. When she spoke to the community, her depth of knowledge and context was both stunning and assuring. When watching her, there could be no question that she was deeply involved—both on our campus and beyond—and she was as forthcoming as possible, acknowledging the fear, uncertainty, and loss even as she’d reinforce ‘We’ve got this, we are WPI’ in her remarks.”

It became a sort of rallying cry: We Are WPI was the name of the COVID website, a hashtag, and the email address for asking questions. A small but mighty group of WPI employees (among them Alison Duffy, director of strategic communications, Adam Epstein, director of undergraduate enrollment services, Matthew Foster, associate director of residential education, Jen Parissi-Forti, events planner, Stephanie Pasha, associate vice president for strategic volunteer engagement, Emily Perlow, associate dean of students, Sue Sontgerath, former director of pre-collegiate outreach programs, and Casey Wall, assistant dean of students and director of residential services), searched for answers, responded, and often developed new content for the FAQ (frequently asked questions) section of the We Are WPI website. By the end of the 2020–21 academic year, the team had answered nearly 6,000 individual emails—more than a dozen every day—many asking multiple questions.

In the spring of 2020, with the infection rate soaring and travel bans in place, there would be no off-campus travel, no events, no access to research labs, no summer classes or activities, and no in-person Commencement. It was never easy to send or receive these difficult announcements, nor to relay details about alternate plans and virtual events, but in those first few months a structure was put in place for regular and measurable outreach across platforms that would serve the community well into the next full academic year.

Meeting various audiences where they were—with the information they needed, in ways they would consume—required the entire marketing communications team, in partnerships with virtually every university department. Several small, focused MarComm teams would meet regularly with professionals from Health Services, Student Affairs, Academic Operations, Business Operations, Talent and Inclusion, and any other part of the university with a message to share and an audience to reach.

Emails from the president or other offices were written and scheduled to assure a steady drumbeat of coordinated information. The team adapted processes and systems normally used for email marketing for external audiences to centrally manage outreach to key community stakeholders across the pandemic. The marketing, creative, and content teams came up with icons, slogans, pledges, social posts, videos, photo galleries, content for a mobile app, and building posters to keep the community informed. To avoid TLDR (too long; didn’t read) long-form narratives, emails would be summarized in easy-to-digest bullets, and key web pages led off with a “What you need to know now” preface.

WPI’s social media platforms were also important communication channels, particularly for students. “Don’t be that goat”—one of the themes that emerged from and was tested with student focus groups—encouraged the community to follow protocols to stay together on campus. When this theme and others that the MarComm team crafted were widely reposted (or replicated on residence hall windows), it was a sure sign of messaging that resonated with students. MarComm staff also monitored social channels for misinformation and to respond to questions and comments.

Media coverage and public interest in President Leshin’s work establishing and leading the commonwealth’s Higher Education Working Group—and research and innovation stories that shared how WPI faculty and staff were doing amazing things to support local and global public health efforts—were instrumental in positioning WPI as an institution that was managing well in trying times.

Deiana credits her dynamic and dedicated team. “With different backgrounds and expertise in a variety of specialties, they came together to do whatever had to be done,” she says, “learning new skills along the way. Everyone rolled up their sleeves and figured it out.”

For many parents, the pandemic added more stress as their students navigated what was likely the most stressful year of their young lives. For those whose students were living through the pandemic hundreds or even thousands of miles away, communication from the university was vital. Typically, students and parents received the same information, but the communications were tailored to each. Keeping parents attuned to what their students were hearing helped them reinforce those messages.

Ann McGregor’s son, an aerospace engineering major in the Class of 2023, was 1,500 miles from their Florida home. “I thought WPI did a really good job of keeping us informed,” she says. “Between being copied on emails, online resources, town hall meetings, and social media, there was never a lack of information. At critical points, such as transitions between terms and after breaks, outreach came more frequently, which provided parents with a sense of what was to come.”

Heather Wailes, mother of a member of the Class of 2022, concurs. “WPI did a great job of communicating with us,” she says. Wailes, a mechanical engineer whose daughter is studying psychological science with a concentration in psychobiology, says she “appreciated the consistent, data-based, factual nature of the communications. I was impressed with the responsiveness of the university. When some parents were concerned about their student’s mental health, and expressed that on social media, WPI was quick to address them by adding even more outreach efforts and incorporating additional activities to keep them connected.”

McGregor says she appreciated the care with which the university made decisions, as well as the explanations behind them. “Some parents were concerned about the time it took to make decisions,” she says. “As a science-based person, I understood the need to have all of the information before the university could move forward. This helped it avoid pitfalls encountered by some other schools who made decisions too quickly.”