Collegiate Times

During my time at Virginia Tech, I spent over 3 and half years on the staff of the student newspaper, the Collegiate Times. Under the Collegiate Times I served many crucial roles including Design Editor for 2 years, Managing Editor for one semester and Editor in Chief my senior year.

During the first couple of years, I spent most of my time as the Design Editor focused on print. As a daily paper at the time, it was up to myself and my co-editor to ensure all pages made it to the printers before deadline each night. As print production decreased, the focus changed to creating unique print designs instead of standard newspaper layouts.

With the switch to Managing Editor my junior year, my focus turned away from print production and towards content instead. Both roles prepared me for the global thinking that would be needed when I took on the role as Editor-in-Chief.

As Editor-in-Chief I had many day to day responsibilities including managing a staff of over 100 editors, reporters, designers and photographers, overseeing production for a bi-weekly print newspaper and online content at a college with over 30,000 students, creating and implementing marketing ideas to promote the organization on campus, and managing social media accounts including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I also coordinated cross-functional teams for media, content production and business development while holding a position on the Educational Media Company board with other collegiate media departments on Virginia Tech’s campus

Along with the day-to-day responsibilities as EIC, I also had the opportunity to work on two long term projects for the Collegiate Times.

Site Redesign

The first project was a redesign of our website, collegiatetimes.com, which at the time was not responsive, having been designed about 10 years prior. With our app being sunset at the time, a redesign that was focused on a mobile experience was needed.

Before designing the new experience, I reviewed student newspaper websites across the country and created surveys for our student body, to understand what they as readers wanted from their reading experience. Working with TownNews CMS, I designed and created mocks and prototypes for a new site. The site was built in about half a year and launched the second semester into my term as Editor in Chief.

We Remember 32: Commemorative Website

The second half of my term as Editor in Chief was focused on the website creation for the 10-year anniversary of the April 16 shooting at Virginia Tech. After 10 years, Virginia Tech as a school and a community had drastically changed due to the April 16 shooting. The commemorative website, weremember32.com, was created to outline the events that happened that day, remember the lives that were lost, and observe what had changed at Virginia Tech in those 10 years.

It was an honor to design, build and produce the site as well as with work with a staff of 10 journalists and several other media departments at Virginia Tech to tell the story of April 16 from 10 years later.