UofL Today purpose
UofL Today is the University of Louisville’s central employee newsletter for providing university-wide news and updates to all faculty and staff. UofL Today features general announcements, notables on our faculty and staff, and employee shoutouts.
Publication schedule
Deadline: noon
UofL Today is distributed digitally to faculty and staff inboxes Monday through Thursday. Approved submissions received before noon will be included in the next day’s UofL Today email. These emails are sent at 10 p.m. the night before the publication date. Submissions received after noon will be posted in the next available newsletter (as long as content is approved).
Faculty/Staff Notables and Employee Shoutouts
The Faculty/Staff Notables and Employee Shoutouts sections of UofL Today are editorial content and are considered separate from the daily announcements. Due to volume, it may take a week or more for notables and shoutouts to get featured.
Examples of Faculty/Staff Notables include awards, a local/national recognition, inclusion in a publication, a major grant, acceptance into a prestigious program or other honor. Examples of Employee Shoutouts include praise for a co-worker who went above and beyond in their job responsibilities or received a promotion.
Student-directed announcements
Students do not receive the UofL Today newsletter issued Monday through Thursday. Student announcements are delivered to students through Student News postings, the SGA Email, and the Graduate Student newsletter. Submit an announcement to Student News or for the weekly SGA Email.
Content guidelines
- Announcements may not exceed 80 words.
- Announcements must be written with employee-centric language that makes it clear you are talking to faculty and staff.
- Announcements must pertain to official university business or to university-sponsored activities for faculty and staff or for the entire university community. OCM reserves the right to reject announcements that do not meet these criteria and to recommend other communication vehicles for promotion.
- Study announcements must contain the IRB or other UofL approval number.
- UofL Today will only feature an announcement once per week. If you wish for your announcement to be featured for multiple weeks, you must resubmit the announcement each week to ensure it enters the publication schedule.
- Event descriptions must include a point of contact (email, phone number, website) for more information. Detailed event information is to be posted on the UofL events calendar and/or the event sponsor’s webpage.
- UofL Today will not accept announcements that are:
- student-oriented (see Student-directed Announcements)
- job postings
- business advertisements for non-university related products or services
- conferences, events or organizations not sponsored by or affiliated with the university
- messages directed to a limited audience (must apply to at least 50% of all faculty and staff)
- death notices or funeral information; exceptions will be made only for memorial services held on campus
Please Note: Announcements that do not meet the content guidelines will be sent back to the submitter and will not be able to be featured in the next day’s newsletter.
Readability guidelines
- Never use exclamation marks in your headings or description text.
- Headings: Capitalize the first word and use lowercase for the others unless they are proper nouns or part of a title.
- Example: Submit feedback for the CARA survey by Tuesday
- Capitalize the word campus when it is part of the campus name (i.e., Belknap Campus, Shelby Campus and HSC Campus)
- Don’t capitalize professor, associate professor, assistant professor, etc.
- Don’t capitalize a person’s title if it comes after his or her name.
- When you include a web link, copy it directly from the web instead of typing it.
- Put the most important information first. You have a limited space. Include a link or place for people to get more information and details to keep your message concise.
OCM reserves the right to edit announcements so they are consistent and adhere to the editorial guidelines put forth by the office.
Submission form completion
- Only university employees may submit announcements.
- Announcements must be written in one paragraph of no more than 80 words.
- Submitter information will not be included at the end of the announcement unless it is specified in the “For more information” field.
- Before clicking on “Submit,” double-check the accuracy of the information and the functionality of your links. By submitting your announcement you verify that your information is accurate and your links are functional. If our editing team happens to catch an inaccuracy or non-working link we may cancel your announcement; however, it is the primary responsibility of the submitter to ensure the accuracy and functionality of their announcement.