During the fall semester of 2021, I served as social media intern for the Cormier Honors College of Longwood University (CHC). My duties as an intern varied on a weekly basis but primarily revolved around content creation for the CHC’s official media channels. At the beginning of each week, I met with my supervisor, Senior Director of the Cormier Honors College Jessi Znosko, to formalize that week’s posting schedule to Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Posts varied as well, ranging from motivational quotes to Honors community updates and feature stories on Honors scholars. In addition to weekly posts, I dedicated much time to redeveloping the CHC’s official website to better market it to prospective students. This task involved constant contact between myself; Honors College faculty, staff, and scholars; and campus and community partners ranging from University Marketing, Communications & Engagement to Letterpress Communications, a Farmville marketing firm that manages digital media for the town of Farmville and Green Front Furniture.

Throughout the course of the semester, I corresponded with Dr. Mary Jo Stockton, the senior director of digital marketing for Longwood University; Agatha Rule, Longwood web content manager/copywriter; Gina Caldwell, the director of admissions marketing for the university; Ilsa Loeser, CEO and principal of Letterpress Communications; and Jen Cox, the director of local and community relations at Longwood. My work with these incredible individuals paved the way for perhaps the most extraordinary of my internship experiences. On November 4 and 5, I was privileged to dedicate my time and social media abilities to the Governor’s Summit on Rural Prosperity, where I spoke with Governor Ralph Northam and interviewed senators, delegates, and regional officials for Cormier and the Virginia Rural Center. It was especially inspiriting to gather with this bipartisan group of legislators and local officials to discuss ways to revitalize rural communities like Farmville across the commonwealth, and I could not have been prouder or more honored to represent the CHC and the department of communication studies as an intern at the summit.

After taking over the social media channels of the Cormier Honors College in August 2021, Cormier’s follower count on Instagram increased by nearly 20% by December; tweets and Facebook posts were shared over one hundred times; posts garnered a combined total of over 52,000 unique impressions on Facebook; a Fall Leadership Retreat graduation post in late August swiftly became the most-liked post in all three accounts’ histories; and students, parents, and alumni began engaging with Cormier in record numbers, with posts averaging around 1,000 impressions each on Facebook.

Work Samples

The links below will guide you through my greatest accomplishments from my internship with Cormier. In the first two Google Drive folders, I have compiled every social media post I crafted throughout my internship, from Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook updates to stories shared throughout the semester celebrating birthdays, holidays, and special occasions. You will notice the consistency with which I crafted each post, adhering to specific layouts, colors, and font choices to promote the brand and organizational message of the Cormier Honors College. The third sample from my internship is a Google Doc containing 20 pages of copy that I either wrote myself or edited throughout the semester for the CHC’s official website. In September 2021, the document was submitted to the Dean of the Cormier Honors College, Dr. Chris Kukk, for further revisions before it was officially submitted to University Marketing, Communications & Engagement in November. Upon approval and implementation by the university, the new website will be published to longwood.edu/honors in December 2021. My fourth sample is a 12-page document containing testimonies from CHC scholars gathered throughout the fall. Each week, I identified one or more scholars to highlight on Cormier’s social media before contacting them via Instagram, GroupMe, or email; I asked them each a series of questions, which they answered with a brief personal statement and a collection of photo memories from their time at Longwood. The Google Doc contains each scholar’s response as it was formatted for social media. Finally, the Google Spreadsheet linked below contains one of my most intensive and rewarding undertakings: an exhaustive, public list of over 120 on-campus social media contacts for use by Cormier and its campus partners. This list was especially helpful as I reached out to campus organizations to promote Lancers Welcome Refugees, a philanthropic panel discussion hosted by the CHC in conjunction with Civitae; Counseling & Psychological Services; and the department of sociology, anthropology, and criminology in November.

Social Media Posts (Google Drive)

Facebook/Instagram Stories (Google Drive)

Website Creation (Google Docs)

Scholars’ Testimonies (Google Docs)

Social Media Contacts (Google Sheets)

Internship Photos

• 

•