About UBC Today
UBC Today is a dedicated website for faculty and staff, with a weekly email sent each Tuesday, highlighting a selection of what’s new that week. The site provides a range of content to support UBC faculty and staff in their work.
It helps to inform, engage and connect colleagues across all our campuses and learning sites. Content is considered based on the following guidelines*:
- Timeliness: Is the content timely (why do faculty and staff need to know now?)
- Relevance: Does it have broad interest to faculty and staff?
- Usefulness: Is it about something that helps faculty and staff do their jobs or stay informed about the university’s priorities/goals?
- Connection: Does it help us learn more about the people who make up UBC’s faculty and staff?
- Research based: Is it responsive to the feedback we have received in our faculty and staff research?
- Professional: Is it professionally written and from a credible source?
- Call to action: Are we being clear in what we are asking of faculty and staff?
In addition to providing compelling content, UBC Today can act as a supplementary channel to UBC Broadcast and/or UBC Bulletin. For example, UBC Broadcast may be used to make an initial wide-scale announcement, with supplementary information and/or updates on the UBC Today website. UBC Today may be used to communicate the following:
- New entries to the President’s blog
- Institutional announcements and updates (e.g. UBC’s strategic plan)
- Awareness days/events (e.g. United Way campaign)
- Messages and reminders related to Board/Senate elections
- Policy consultation – messaging from Legal Counsel
- Operational/project updates
- Research grant reminders
- Awards and recognition
- Senior appointments of interest (beyond senior leadership)
- Stay safe messages
*Faculty and staff have been asked on numerous occasions for feedback on what information they wish to receive – via the Open Minds Forum and other Internal Communications research. The criteria for UBC Today prioritizes the need to ensure that content is responsive to what faculty and staff tell us they want to receive.
Audience
UBC Today has been designed for UBC’s faculty and staff audience. Each Tuesday*, an email is issued to all faculty and staff highlighting a selection of new and interesting items that week.
*In the event of a statutory holiday, the weekly email may be issued on a Wednesday.
Ownership/Approvals
UBC Today is owned by Internal Communications. The Internal Communications team acts in the role of editor with content submissions received from all corners of the university. Content can be submitted via the UBC Today content submission form or email to the Internal Communications team. UBC Today also draws event information from events.ubc.ca or events.ok.ubc.ca (specifically curated for a faculty and staff audience).
Although the website provides event listings, it is not used as a promotional tool to market specific events and/or announcements to faculty and staff. This is in order to maintain the integrity of this channel.
Guidance for content submission
Communicators are invited to submit any of the following content types:
| Type | Examples | Additional considerations* |
|---|---|---|
| Announcement | Achievements, appointments, operational updates, new opportunities, leadership updates, something for faculty and/or staff to provide feedback or comment on (e.g. vote in elections, complete a survey, participate in research). | Appointments of directors, dept heads and above only. Achievements and recognition must be significant or noteworthy. |
| Event | An in person or virtual event, activity, workshop, webinar, speaking, sporting or networking event. | Please submit your event to events.ubc.ca or events.ok.ubc.ca and tag for a faculty and staff audience. |
| Resource | Tools, templates, guides, FAQs, systems, processes. | Consider whether the resource needs to be added as a permanent link on the UBC Today website. |
| Story | A story or news about the work of an individual, team, faculty or unit, including research updates and findings, or examples of our strategic plan in action. | Aim to keep stories under 800 words and include multimedia where possible. |
| Useful date | A university specific date or deadline such as when to apply for funding or a date by when to complete a survey. | Must be a UBC specific date which comes with a link to a page with more information. |
*Please note that we only link to UBC websites and cannot link out to external websites that are not owned by UBC
New content will be published throughout the week. You can submit content as far in advance as you’d like — but, where possible, please ensure your content is submitted at least two working days prior to your desired date of publication.
Once you’ve submitted content, a member of the UBC Internal Communications team will review your request, and let you know when and where your content will be published.