BY ALEX NORMAN-WASHINGTON

Reporter

Already less than a month on the job and Michelle Lyday, has set high expectations for herself as the new Director of Public Affairs and Communications at CSUB.

Lyday has over twenty years of experience in the field of marketing and advertising, eleven of which she spent running her own Advertising agency, which she chose to close in 2010. After that, she moved onto to Chevron, holding the title of Change Manager assisting the department of Public Affairs and government with a variety of communication tasks such as producing corporate videos or marketing pieces.

“I did enjoy my time at Chevron. It was brand new and there was a lot to learn,” said Lyday. “But this is back to what I love doing. It’s back to press releases, we are going to be working on a television campaign. I am doing ads and working on the magazine.”

The office of Public Affairs and Communications, a division of University Advancement manages projects ranging from the organization of major media and public relations activities to the creation of marketing and informational publications. This includes the publishing of Your CSUB magazine, the alumni magazine and major institutional publications.

“Working with Michelle has been great, she has taught me a lot about working with the media on campus,” said Shelby Parker, a marketing specialist in the PAC office.

Moving forward the PAC office plans to place a bigger emphasis on social media with more relevant and frequent posts to the schools Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. Lyday also placed an emphasis on the alignment between the multitudes of Facebook pages associated with CSUB. Currently there are over twenty pages associated CSUB ranging from athletics, clubs and student organizations as well as some of the schools on campus such as Nursing or Engineering.

“I think that we can put our arm around them, and make sure that we are sharing the same kinds of posts, that we are linking to each other pages. That we are re-tweeting when something happens that the whole school needs to know about and not just one particular department,” said Lyday.

Another area of improvement Michelle feels she can bring to the campus in the next couple years is more support from the surrounding community, which will in turn, help CSUB become a bigger Marketing force in the community. “I think Lengthwise Brewing Company across the street does a good job of having our posters up,” said Lyday. “But why aren’t we in ten restaurant’s?”

“It seems like CSUB doesn’t play a major role in the community like other campuses that I’ve seen,” said Michael Nieto a senior criminal justice major. “You don’t really get any specials or deals around the community like you would see at UC- Santa Barba or Arizona State.”

For more information on Michelle Lyday, you can contact her at (661)654-2138 or [email protected].