UA ALUM WORKS TO UNIFY BUCHTEL COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Former UA student Lisa Craig stepped in as director of Marketing and Communication in 2022, and she’s using her hard-won storytelling skills to bring the college together.

By Natalie Mowad, Editor-in-Chief ‘23

“Interesting, curious and grounded,” Craig tells us when asked three words to describe The University of Akron’s Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences (BCAS) students.

If you’re out on Coleman Common, you may run into Lisa Craig, a UA alum and the new director of Marketing and Communication for the BCAS. She likes to wander the Common the way a reporter wanders their beat, observing students and staff alike and searching out stories.

“It is important to tell stories about students, because that is the reason quite literally that we exist,” Craig said.

Craig also shares faculty accomplishments and news about groundbreaking research out of the college, but that’s not her top priority.

She finds excitement in telling external audiences like parents, media, donors and prospective students about the experiences current students are having on campus.

“This is what they’re studying, doing, and who they are learning to become,” Craig said. “There’s nothing more important than that. They are the story.”

Craig enjoys her new position so much because, to quote Hamilton, she is “in the room where it happens.” She is at the Dean’s team level where she can make suggestions, implement ideas and follow through on things that she never had the opportunity to do before.

“I am making more of a direct contribution to spotlighting how amazing our college is and our department is. I have a stronger hand in helping others, whether donor or alumni or prospective students or parents or other people on campus, tell those stories and say look, we’re freaking awesome and I’m going to tell you why over and over again,” said Craig.

In Craig’s year at UA, she is most proud of her creation of the Buchtel Beat, the weekly newsletter that goes out to all faculty and staff in the college. Since the BCAS is large, no one really knew much about what the other units were doing. When Craig was hired, there was an initiative of “we all need to be one.”

Recently, Craig also created the Buchtel Bulletin, a newsletter for UA Alumni. To receive the Buchtel Bulletin, alumni must be in the UA Alumni Association’s database.

“There will be consistency [in the Buchtel Bulletin] of videos from the dean, hands-on learning experience, and then always a faculty spotlight, research spotlight, alumni spotlight.”

In the next year, you can expect the BCAS to become more of a team. Craig will achieve this by communicating that the college is there to help students to explore where their passions, curiosity and interest are and discover how that translates to a career.

“We want to communicate about the pathways for you to go through if you know what you love and what moves you, there’s a lot of different ways, especially within our college because we’re so diverse that we can help you map out a four-year program that will make your heart sing,” said Craig.

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