sure. Uh, well, I would say that my origin story from my career goes back to about 1981. I was in the Air Force for four years and, um was coming to the end of my enlistment and trying to figure out what to do next. I was living in Germany for a couple of years, and I was very interested in sort of global politics. Um, I enjoyed writing, and I thought there might be some way to weave those things together. And my last assignment was in South Carolina and I went to the university there and spoke Thio journalism adviser Who, um I what I remember about her when she was a fairly diminutive woman and she had a full leg cast from a recent skiing accident and we were walking side by side, and she was telling me about you know, why journalism was so great. And I couldn't keep up with her because she was so effusive and and and so excited. And she got me excited about journalism because, you know, she talked about it as a way toe to shine a light and dark places, and they have the same to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. So that really spoke to me and eso. I enrolled and got my undergraduate degree in journalism. I got a position at a local newspaper pretty soon after starting school, actually, while I was still in college and I worked for newspapers for about 13 years as a reporter and it's an editor on then, um, about actually, about 20 years ago, I got an offer to work at the University of Iowa, where I am now doing communications. So that's where I've been in a couple different roles since then.

Well, let me start with the hours because one of the reasons that I went from journalism to communications at the university is much more reasonable hours. When I was a reporter, you worked all sorts of crazy times and weekend. So it's typically a typical week is, you know, 40 hour week. Uh, but sometimes if there's, ah, PR Christ to sort of something, you stay until the job's done. But in terms of priorities. So I'd say there's three. If my job, we're kind of broken into a pie chart, there'd be 33 major pieces. The first one, and actually which takes up much of my time is what I kind of call, um, managing functional communications. And what I mean by that is the information that that needs to go out and be shared with audiences, primarily internally, to keep things running right. I mean, it's sort of the oil that keeps any organization going, is keeping people informed. So the Office of Research for those who might not know what that does that the university is, we provide a lot of administrative support for faculty and staff who are conducting research and scholarship across the University. Whether it's a medicine or engineering the arts and humanities, we help them find funding for their research. We provide them lab space and and shared research facilities. So there's a lot of just sometimes kind of boring but but essential information that has to be exchanged to keep people, uh, knowing what to do and what's available. So that's sort of the first thing. The second, uh, pi piece, I guess, I would say, is sort of promotional, um, information or storytelling, which is one of my favorite things, which is kind of talking about Why is research important and why is it interesting? And how does it help people? And so we do that a number of ways through videos and press releases and feature stories, printed publications and sometimes special events. The final. The final third is what I would call sort of. Well, it's crisis communication. It's dealing with things when they don't go well or if the media call and have a question about something, even if it's not a negative story. People get kind of worked up when the journalists call, and so my job is to kind of be a liaison with them. And having worked in journalism, I feel very comfortable doing that. And so, but sometimes things happen. Accidents happen, Onda media call, and we have toe. We have to respond to it in a way that's helpful. That's honest and, uh, helps protect the reputation of the university at the same time. Yeah, So those are the three major pie pieces, I would say.

Yeah, it's a good. It's a really good question, and you're right. Things do move a little more ponderously at universities and for good reason. I mean, you know, research, for instance, takes many years and and sometimes kind of a slog. And so, yeah, things to move a little slower in terms of my job patient. I think it's not unique the universities, but there's just so much information out there now. You know, with social media and everybody's wired and can, you know, share their opinions with thousands of people instantly. People are overwhelmed with information. Um, and we're kind of just another voice in the, you know, in the mix on. And it's hard to stand out if you're trying to tell positive stories, particularly, um, and it's it's hard toe could be heard. And so So I think that that's Ah, that's a major challenge. Um, and I think you know, one of the ways that we sort of overcome that maybe not perfectly, is first of all, knowing your audience. Um, I think it's really important to not waste people's time. Um, there's a lot of information out there that's marketing and coming onto people and trying to tell them what to think and what to buy and what to do, and it's just too much. And so we want to really know who our audience is, what's helpful to them, what's interesting to them and really pay attention to that and then to use multiple channels to try to get it across. So I'm really a big proponent of repurpose ing information like once upon a time you would write a story and it would go in a newspaper and that would be the end of it. Or you might put it on a website and forget about it. But you've gotta use it in multiple venues. So you put it on a website you put in a publication, you send it in an email. You do it on social media. You talk about it in public remarks. You reinforce the message multiple times. So eso I think respecting your audience, knowing your audience, sharpening your message and sending it out through multiple channels is really important