From the Dean: Not just more but better communication
Happy summer, everyone!
First, I want to thank you all for everything you do for North Dakota’s only school of medicine and health sciences. My first six months here have been nothing short of invigorating – if busy.
If you were able to attend or view our most recent All Hands meeting in June, you know that our administrative team is always looking for ways to communicate more effectively with all of our constituents, from staff and students to residents and faculty, wherever they may live and work.
Our goal moving forward is to communicate with you not necessarily more but better.
To that end, I’ll continue to produce a monthly column for the SMHS newsletter and continue with our quarterly All Hands meetings.
And as you might have heard, we’re revising how the “All-SMHS” email system will be managed. To summarize, while each of you will have the opportunity to submit an email message directed to all faculty and staff at our school, the messages will now be reviewed first before they hit “all” mailboxes.
So heads-up: it’s likely that not all messages will be approved for widespread release.
We’re making this change because faculty and staff have been clear with us that they often receive emails for events or notices that don’t pertain to them (for example, when our Northwest Campus staff in Minot receives dozens of emails a month for events or building notices that apply only to those of us on the Northeast Campus Grand Forks).
Revising this system should result in fewer emails and more relevant communications for all of us.
As a trade-off, we’re exploring developing new or promoting existing listservs specific to certain constituencies (for example the “faculty-only” or “Grand Forks-only” email lists). I just learned recently that we have listservs that go to the Fargo, Bismarck, and Minot campuses exclusively, or only to faculty.
We’re also building new platforms that better aggregate and distribute discipline-specific news and updates, for example the SMHS Research Matters blog and email newsletter, which will come online for research and research-adjacent faculty and staff soon.
We’re certainly open to similar project or process suggestions from other constituencies, and we will be rolling out additional communication pathways based on your feedback in the future. If you have additional ideas for not just more but better communication, please let us know.
Again, thank you for all you do to help SMHS meet its purpose: to serve North Dakota for the benefit of its people and enhance the quality of their lives.
Marjorie R. Jenkins, M.D., M.Ed.H.P., FACP
Vice President for Health Affairs, UND
Dean, School of Medicine & Health Sciences
