Date of Award

Fall 12-15-2017

Degree Type

Honors Thesis

Department

Management and Marketing

First Advisor

Dr. Elizabeth Minton

Abstract

University campuses and other institutions across the nation struggle with installing and operating an internal and unified source of communication. In the era of e-mail, text-messaging, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and many more software applications, college campuses in particular are always looking to adapt best practices and reach the maximum amount of people with engaging content. Here at the University of Wyoming (UW), many departments exercise their rights to distribute information to all of the students, anytime, at their own discretion. Consequently, the issue of oversaturation can occur. In this paper, a focus group comprised of students of varying age, gender, and major was chosen in order to identify problems that arise in association with all-student listservs at UW. The focus group acted as a catalyst to shape further research as the project progressed. Among the questions answered are: “Which organizations and departments send out emails?”, “What content and formatting is included in those emails?”, “How does someone get information onto that email?”, “Are these methods effective?”, and “Are there better ways to communicate electronically?”. The overall purpose of researching this topic was to discover whether a communication problem exists or not, to understand the network of departments utilizing mass communication, to gather institutional feedback, to gather student feedback, and to figure out what makes an optimal electronic message, ultimately proposing various recommendations that are in line with the obtained data.

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