Bates Communications Office, Fall 2013

The Bates Communications Office is facing the new academic year with lens caps off, smartphones poised and the WordPress pedal floored.

Yes, there will also be a few new pens and crisp fresh notebooks, too — but by and large, 2013–14 will see BCO continue its robust expansion into photo/video storytelling, social media and other online channels.

An exciting development on that front is Bates’ partnership with PrestoSports, provider of the college’s new content management system for sports information. Bates’ new athletics site, athletics.bates.edu, gives visitors easier, more intuitive navigation, while visually complementing the college’s home site.

The new site also takes advantage of membership in the PrestoSports network: For instance, even as a home basketball game is underway, scores and results will appear not only on Bates’ site, but on scoreboard sections of nescac.com, d3hoops.com and the athletics websites of opponents who are also PrestoSports clients.

The first to hold the position of Bates photography/video fellow, Mike Bradley has been crucial to BCO image-gathering since his arrival last October. Mike, a 2012 graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology, has made a big difference to our photographic reach and has covered events small and large — including the inauguration of President Clayton Spencer, which he helped shoot just weeks after landing in Lewiston.

“Working for Bates has encouraged me to look at each assignment more deeply, and consider how the goals of the college can be conveyed in anything I shoot,” says Mike, who has reported to Phyllis Graber Jensen, director of photography and video, during his tenure in the one-year position. Sad to say, Mike is taking his excellent skills and can-do attitude elsewhere after Sept. 29.

Jenna Ligor, too, has been known at Bates as a photographer, especially after showing her images in the 2011 Senior Exhibition. But she put her major in art and visual culture to different use after graduation, earning a graphic design certificate at Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Jenna joined BCO as a visual designer on Feb. 18, working with Assistant Director of Creative Design Tammy Caron and Digital User Experience Lead Chris Bournakis.

The Bates classroom was a great prelude for the Bates workplace, says Ligor, who lives in Denmark, Maine. In addition to deepening her understanding of visual communication, “the rigorous academics helped prepare me really well,” she says. “I learned to be organized and how to manage my time.”

Jeremy Cluchey joined Bates as director of creative design on April 1, overseeing the newly combined team of visual designers and web communicators. Jeremy came to Bates from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a 3,000-person agency where he managed digital communications — a position created for him..

Jeremy, who holds a master’s degree in public policy from Duke and a bachelor’s degree in English from Wesleyan University, grew up in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. He now lives in Bowdoinham with his wife and young daughter.

“I’m really enjoying the substance of the work” in BCO, he says. “There are a lot of challenges in terms of communicating about higher education right now, so it’s fun trying to turn those challenges into opportunities to really express the value of a Bates education.”

Last but not least on the list of new BCO staff is Nick Dow, who moved into 141 Nichols St. on July 29 as our first assistant sports information director. He will join SID Andy Walter in reporting games, marketing Bates athletics and profiling great players — a fast-paced business that itself often seems as challenging as the sports that SIDs cover.

“From a really young age, I’ve enjoyed sports on every level,” says Nick, who got into sports information as a student at Boston College and continued in that role at BC after graduating with a history degree in 2012. “Getting the opportunity to be a part of sports from another angle is pretty cool.”