Employee newsletter hits inboxes

Freshmen were not the only new addition to show up on campus last week-an employee newsletter made its debut in Webmail inboxes.

The newsletter-entitled The Week at Duke-is sent every Thursday to employees and provides news and events going on at Duke in a fun, attractive and easy-to-read manner, said Michael Schoenfeld, vice president for public affairs and government relations.

"The purpose and goal [of the newsletter] is to provide a snapshot of important information for members of the Duke community," he said. "It is based on research we've done over the past year about what people are interested in receiving and how, when and in what form they want to receive it."

A recent survey of Duke employees and faculty also showed high demand for a weekly newsletter, said David Jarmul, associate vice president of news and communications.

"A large committee studied international communications here about three years ago, and one of the main conclusions was that many people who work at Duke felt simultaneously overwhelmed with information and yet uninformed about what was going on in the campus," said Jarmul, who also headed the group that designed the newsletter.

The Week at Duke will replace the eDuke newsletter, which was distributed at Duke for the past six years and will slowly be phased out, Jarmul said. The eDuke newsletter had a weekly and monthly version, and provided summaries of event and research news at Duke.

Sally Allison, manager of the Professional Development Institute in Human Resources, said she thought that the new presentation of the newsletter was more professional and the graphics were more appealing.

Although work on the newsletter did not begin until this past summer, it is part of an extensive revision of the University's internal communication system that has been taking place over the last couple of years, Schoenfeld said.