Mary Ann Shaw Center for Public and Community Service
The mission of the Shaw Center is to promote experiential learning through community engagement. As a Public Relations Leadership Intern at the Shaw Center, I work on a team to facilitate external and internal communication, connecting a multitude of people such as Syracuse University students and staff, alumni and local nonprofit organizations. Ways we conduct our outreach include social media, website branding and event planning.
Social media
A main part of the Shaw Center's work involves Syracuse University students and campus organizations. Knowing this, my team and I focus our biggest communication strategy on Instagram, as that is the quickest and most accessible forum for our target audiences. In just under two years, we have increased our Instagram engagement by nearly 100%. Before, our posts were only graphics. Realizing that we are a community engagement center and dedicate our work to community-building, our team pivoted our strategy to "showing more faces." Since this shift, more students are aware of the work we do, who works with us, opportunities we are promoting and how to easily connect with us.
In addition to student and campus organizations outreach, we connect with Shaw Center alumni and Syracuse University staff as well. For this, we prioritize our outreach on LinkedIn.
Website management
A big part of my job is managing the Shaw Center website. I update and edit content as needed to ensure accurate and up-to-date information, write/re-post articles, redesign/reorganize content for accessibility and accuracy and ensure the longterm development of the site. In the summer of 2024, I worked with two professional staff members to redesign our website. Done entirely on WordPress, we added new service learning and transportation tabs to better communicate the mission of our organization and the transportation shuttle services our center offers.
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To check it out, visit https://shawcenter.syr.edu/ or click one of the images to the right.​
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Event Planning
Another way my team and I conduct outreach: event planning. To promote the center, attract more students and celebrate our accomplishments, we coordinate various class presentations, tabling and events. In spring of 2025, the Shaw Center celebrated our 30 year anniversary. We hosted an event that invited current interns and staff, alumni and community and campus partners. My team and I partnered with the Syracuse University Office of Academic Affairs, and the Office of Alumni Engagement to plan the event.
