Spreading the Word: MCI develops new communications strategy, hires director

It may be a small school, but Mennonite Collegiate Institute is making big strides to increase its prominence both locally and around the world. With a new communications strategy in the works, MCI hopes to create a message that reaches people who otherwise wouldn’t have heard of the school. While this initiative will involve reaching out to an international audience, principal Darryl Loewen suggests that it is largely a response to MCI’s experiences within Manitoba.

“In some ways, it’s an answer to the years-old challenge that people even in the local vicinity don’t know anything about us,” he said.

Despite the fact that MCI has operated in the southern Manitoba community for 119 years, Loewen notes that there are many residents of the area that simply don’t know the school exists.

In order to address this issue and, as Loewen puts it, “intentionally mobilize word-of-mouth referral”, the school has hired Jeremy Siemens as their Communications Director.  Siemens, a recent graduate of Canadian Mennonite University, says that the strategy is about more than attracting new students.

“Increasing enrollment is just one goal of the plan; the scope of the strategy is actually much larger than that. I think the best way to describe it is in terms of community. Whether we are connecting with someone for the first time or furthering relationships with our stakeholders, we feel that effective communication goes a long way in strengthening our ties to the people around us,” he said.

Siemens notes that the strategy is still taking shape, but indentified a few areas that the plan seeks to address. The most significant is a redesign of the school’s website, mciblues.net, which is set to be completed later this summer. He feels that it will be a great tool for making MCI known around the world.

“With every generation, people depend more on the internet. This makes it the single greatest resource out there. If we can create an appealing website that informs our audience, there is almost no limit to the number of people we can reach,” he said.

While many of the details of MCI’s new communications strategy are yet to be set, both Loewen and Siemens are optimistic that the plan will produce measurable results. In addition to attracting more students, they hope this initiative will result in increased rentals of Buhler Hall and other school facilities.