Many recent Circle of Excellence Awards entries touch on environmental issues. Ahead of Earth Day 2022 on April 22, learn about the latest environmental research with three facts about climate change from award-winning projects.

Circle of Excellence winners showcase three components of great data visualizations

Amid tight budgets, a shifting readership, and the drive for engaging online content—is print dead? The answer, by all accounts, is no. Print is alive and well. Alumni and school magazines have stayed relevant and resonant with audiences by leveraging the strengths of print and strategically grappling with cost challenges.

For members seeking information on a variety of advancement topics, the CASE Library’s Advancement Resource Catalog provides a central stop for resources on topics including campaign planning, engaging non-traditional alumni, and the latest research in the world of advancement.

Q: How do you decide what data to dig into for your illustrations? What intrigues you?

Let's face it: No one who works in communications and marketing wants to design flyers or write email copy every day. These professionals crave inventive yet impactful projects that will propel the school, college, or university they serve. But too often creative people devote their workdays to cranking out uninspired deliverables for Director So-and-So's upcoming event. When a marcomm team functions as a service-level agency, its members live in reaction mode. Its agenda is set by urgent requests from other units rather than the institution's strategic goals.

Ideas we love from institutions everywhere

Ideas we love from institutions everywhere

For Hannah Brencher, postcollege life in New York City wasn't what she expected. Depressed and struggling to find purpose, she reached out to others with words of kindness and support by leaving anonymous spirit-lifting love letters throughout the city. In October 2010, she blogged about the experience and promised: If you send me your address, I will write you a letter. Her email inbox filled up. Eleven months and 400 letters later, the project turned into MoreLoveLetters.com, a website where people can request love letter bundles for people in need or volunteer to write them. More than 20,000 volunteers—including students belonging to the site's 60-plus Campus Cursive chapters—have helped send more than 100,000 letters to people around the world. Brencher's memoir, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers, comes out in paperback in spring 2016.

Where's the proof? With growing concerns over student debt, rising tuition, and the perceived high costs of higher education, prospective students and their families are clamoring for evidence. It's a reality that's forcing institutions, long accustomed to touting their academic strengths, to emphasize career preparation, job placement, value, and return on investment.