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Introducing the New and Improved AASHE Bulletin!

Mar 19 2012
Submitted by Margo Wagner on March 19, 2012 - 11:00pm

AASHE is very excited to announce the debut of its redesigned AASHE Bulletin! We are celebrating the e-newsletter’s sixth year anniversary with a new look and restructured content. The redesign was implemented with the following goals in mind:

connectdots

1. Thought leadership

While 90 percent of subscribers who participated in the 2011 Bulletin reader survey said the newsletter does a good job in general, many suggested a more curated approach to the content, meaning highlighting some stories over others.

Traditionally a clearinghouse of higher education sustainability news, the weekly e-newsletter is now taking a more curated approach with a new Connecting the Dots column. Appearing above the table of contents (TOC), this feature will examine several stories in each Bulletin issue, contextualizing and linking the themes to foster an integrated perspective on higher education sustainability.

To aid the Bulletin’s transformation toward a vehicle for thought leadership, this column will feature a rotating list of higher education sustainability specialists. This inaugural AASHE Bulletin Editorial board is made up of 17 sustainability leaders with diverse areas of expertise including sustainability education, climate action planning, student engagement, biomimicry, risk analysis, change management, measuring sustainability, diversity, social justice and much more. Visit the AASHE Bulletin web page for a complete list of board members.

2. Advancing sustainability (and providing an invaluable resource)

In an effort to better advance higher education sustainability, the redesigned Bulletin also features expanded coverage designed to push the boundaries of traditional ways of thinking about sustainability. Recently, a new “Access & Affordability” category was added to capture key national conversations including the Occupy protests and Pell Grant debates. Expect other new categories as the concept evolves over time.

3. Engaging a diverse and inspired community

The Bulletin will also work to deepen the inclusion of global perspectives on what higher education sustainability means with a new monthly Global Edition. Expanding on the current biennial coverage, the Global Edition will be issued monthly starting with the March 27 issue. Instead of only containing global news, the monthly edition will integrate international stories with the stories from the U.S. and Canada scheduled to run that week.

Redesign Features

Designed by Aten Design Group and implemented by the AASHE IT team, the Bulletin has a fresh new look with colors and fonts that match the AASHE website (also designed by Aten).

The Bulletin reader survey showed that 67 percent of respondents like the Bulletin format with the TOC on top, organized by primary topic, and the story summaries below. The chief complaint was that the length of the Bulletin was too long each week. We also heard that there was too much emphasis on green building in the Bulletin, a result of the alphabetical TOC with the “Buildings” category at the top of most issues. With this feedack in mind, we made these minor tweaks to the organization of the content:

Presentation of Bulletin Categories
The Bulletin TOC is now organized by three major headers that mirror AASHE’s Sustainabilty Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS) credit categories:

  • Education & Research
  • Operations
  • Planning, Administration & Engagement

Content Introduced by “Connecting the Dots” Feature
This new AASHE editorial feature headlines the newsletter to give it more of a magazine feel with a picture and the author’s byline. This is a change aimed at being both aesthetically pleasing and better curating the content for our readers.

Shorter Bulletin Blurbs
We have worked to shorten the length of Bulletin story and job posting summaries, while still providing a summary of the stand-out information.

Sponsorships

Bulletin sponsorships were moved from underneath the table of contents to “above the fold” at the top right of the newsletter. This change is to give businesses a better opportunity to connect with Bulletin readers, and the space provided is better designed for readers to understand how that sponsor’s products may relate to their higher education sustainability efforts.

AASHE is offering a limited-time discount on Bulletin sponsorships through September 18.

We hope you enjoy the new Bulletin and share it with others! Contact AASHE Bulletin Editor Margo Wagner at margo@aashe.org with any questions or feedback.

Mar 20 2012

Bulletin redesign

Submitted by Peter Crownfield on March 20, 2012 - 2:11pm.

Good job with the redesign!

Here's my 2¢ worth of critique:

I think it's a mistake to place the sponsor's logos [advertisements] above the actual content. The newsletter is not really made possible by the sponsors, it's made possible by all the creative, hard-working folks who are moving their campuses to greater sustainability. [And moving the sponsors up really doesn't do anything to help readers understand how they connect to their efforts.]

Connecting the Dots seems like a good idea, but the proof will come as we see what is actually done & said in that section.

TOC formatting needs some work -- 2-digit line numbers force the actual title into a 2nd line.

The Building section will continue to take up a lot of space unless you either limit these to a single line or two OR create a single listing that lists new LEED certifications and restricts separate articles to significant innovations.

Peter

Peter Crownfield
Campus Sustainability Initiative
Alliance for Sustainable Communities-Lehigh Valley
Bethlehem, PA 18015
<www.sustainlv.org>

Mar 26 2012

Re: Bulletin Redesign

Submitted by Margo Wagner on March 26, 2012 - 11:00am.

Hi Peter,

Thank you for taking the time to read the Bulletin and provide us with such thoughtful commentary. We appreciate your feedback! I want to address a couple of your concerns:

  • Sponsor logo placement: It was challenging in this first issue to show readers what our intent is for the Bulletin sponsorships because we did not have a “single-issue” sponsorship (logo + text) that we could run in this issue. The single-issue sponsorship (with text) is offered at a higher rate than the logo-only sponsors that you see in the current issue. Our goal is to have sponsors use this text in a way that conveys their specific role in the campus sustainability movement. For example, the text might say something like "Company A provides energy monitoring solutions for campus buildings. Read more about Company A's work with Greenback College and other institutions."

While I agree with you that it is not just businesses that make the Bulletin possible, and it is certainly the hard-working, devoted group of higher education sustainability champions who inspire and drive the Bulletin content, businesses do play a role in making the stories and initiatives captured in the Bulletin a reality. Hopefully we can convey this better with future sponsorships.

  • TOC Formatting: Apologies for this, and thanks for pointing it out! Our IT team is working to fix some of these formatting kinks on different browsers. I'll be in touch via email to make sure your TOC formatting is fixed.

  • Shortening LEED stories: We talked about creating a single listing of LEED certifications, but those stories are also the result of hard-working folks who are dedicated to the campus sustainability movement, and we don't want to diminish their efforts. Also, all of our stories are tied to our Bulletin database, which feeds our annual higher education reviews. Any changes that reduce our coverage in a single area may mean that we won't capture it in a way that is useful for both annual reviews of sustainability and media inquiries. We’ll continue to discuss this issue though and see if there’s a satisfactory solution.

I hope this answers a few of your issues, and again, thank you so much for being an engaged Bulletin reader! Keep the suggestions coming.

Best,

Margo Wagner
AASHE Bulletin Editor