I have just finished the final of four alumni interviews for the autumn edition of the magazine. Without tipping my hand too much, because I do love giving surprises, I thought I would describe how these interviews come about.

The autumn edition of Trinity Per Saecula is always the more alumni-focused of the two editions. This is, quite simply, a matter of timing. School is out of session or just beginning in the summer and in the early autumn as I begin to put the magazine together, so it would be difficult to schedule classroom visits or interviews with students or teachers during those times. Alumni, who I interview one-on-one and who don’t always have academic schedules, are relatively easy to meet with during the summer and early autumn. Thus, the autumn edition features alumni while the spring edition is more student and faculty focused as the school is fully in session in the winter and in the early spring when I begin to organize that edition of the magazine.

Those of you who have been receiving the magazine for a while know that for several years the alumni articles tended to be based on careers. For example, there was one edition that featured alumni who worked in theater and another edition that featured alumni who had careers in the armed services. Recently the autumn alumni features have been more thematically structured. The autumn 2009 edition that focused on the theme of transition and change provided me with the opportunity to speak with ...

At the beginning of this summer an alumnus wrote to tell me that he had tried to view Sine Charta using his iPad and that, while he had been able to access some of the material on the site, he had been thwarted using several pages…including the video and the slideshow pages.  Not being one of the several hundred thousand early iPad adopters myself, I headed to the Apple store on Broadway. Sure enough, the alumnus was correct…Sine Charta was not iPad compatible.
 
While I monitor the number of people using the site and the pages they visit, I had not been tracking how people accessed Sine Charta. As I walked to the subway station to head back to Trinity, I started thinking about what might be the number of Sine Charta readers using mobile devices. Based on, well, just a hunch really, I imagined that the number might be in the eight to twelve percent range. Imagine my surprise when I ran the report that afternoon and discovered that thirty-two percent of you visit Sine Charta using some kind of mobile device. I was, frankly, stunned.

Over the next several weeks I watched as the sales of iPads, and then the new iPhone 4, seemed to set new records every week. The sheer volume of units sold (over 6 million iPads and iPhone 4s by July) was astonishing as were the demographics…all ages were buying iPads, from eighteen year olds to those over the age of fifty-six…with the bulk of owners ...

Trinity is beginning its ten-year self-evaluation for the New York State Association of Independent Schools (NYSAIS). This is often referred to as the “big” evaluation, versus the “small” five-year evaluation. The goal of the ten-year self-evaluation is to have the institution review where it stands and where it believes it should stand on a broadly defined list of topics. Having completed this self-evaluation, Trinity will then be visited by professionals from other member schools who will assess our self-evaluation and their assessment will form the basis for Trinity’s continued accreditation by NYSAIS. As I have been asked to chair the sub-committee on communications I thought I would take this opportunity to write about the various aspects of communication at Trinity.

Director of Communications
The areas of communications for which I am primarily responsible are fairly specific. There are the print publications—calendar, annual report, Trinity Per Saecula, and admissions marketing materials—and then the online publications and Web sites—Sine Charta, Exposure Manager, Facebook, and Twitter. Last but not least is my work with the press and with the entertainment companies. In addition, there are things for which I have “identity” responsibilities…helping Trinity keep a consistent look and feel for the materials that are sent out to the members of the community. These include projects as diverse as athletics uniforms, divisional handbooks, commencement programs, and office stationery.

Divisions, Departments, and Offices
Each of Trinity’s three divisions as well as the various departments and offices at the School (departments are academic and offices are administrative) are responsible for ...