NCMPR BLOG

by Eve Markman
Community College of Philadelphia
Philadelphia, PA

In March, at the NCMPR National Conference in Denver, Colorado, I was honored with the Communicator of the Year Award. I have always been in awe of the impressive individuals that have received this accolade; many of them have been my mentors, and I could not believe I was joining this list of extraordinary communicators.

This award came as such a bright spot in what has been a very difficult two years, both for me personally and for community colleges. As marketing, communications and creative services professionals, we all had to dig deep and come up with new ways to do our jobs and market our colleges to students who needed us more than ever. Where do you turn for new enrollment ideas? As always, I reached out to my colleagues at NCMPR.

NCMPR has been a huge influence on my career over the 25 years that I’ve been a member. I started out going to conferences, then coming back to my college and trying to replicate all of the best practices. Any time I needed to start something new, I had confidence that someone at NCMPR would have already done it and would help me get going. Becoming more involved at NCMPR, I found not only amazing colleagues that dealt with the same challenges but great friends as well.

During the pandemic, NCMPR started offering its members free webinars, and many focused on how we could turn this enrollment problem around. The Listserv was another great resource; I’d just send an email, and colleagues across the country would respond with what they were doing.

The honor of being Communicator of the Year comes as the culmination of a long career in community college marketing. Nobody gets here by themselves. We have an amazing strategic communications team at Community College of Philadelphia. Our area of the college has continually found ways to develop better, more creative, and more inspired work by putting students first and thinking about how we can help them achieve their goals.

But it is the NCMPR members who have nurtured me and added such value to my career and my life. I urge you to get involved in this organization – it will be the best thing you ever did!