Best of CASE District V Award
 

Institution: Kent State University

Title of entry: Kent State Magazine – October Edition

About this entry: We decided to completely shift our alumni magazine to strictly online in 2024. The October 2024 issue was the second edition of the new magazine and we wanted it to feel like more of a digital experience than just a magazine that was online via PDFs on a page. We also expanded the audience to include all alumni, but also faculty, staff and students. We settled on a monthly model through the fall and spring semesters, with a total of 6 issues during the academic year (September, October, November, February, March, April). This required a full redesign of our existing magazine site, new article templates, a new method of collecting class notes and increasing multimedia content. We settled on four features for this issue: a cover story on Metin Eren and our Experimental Archaeology Lab, a profile of one of our Fashion School alumni who studied abroad and now works in the fashion sector, an in-depth look at one of our regional faculty member's research into the integration of Negro League stats into the MLB stats and a look at how the May 4 legacy of Kent State and the protests that ensued helped to lower the voting age to 18. We redid class notes in a new design and more fun format, and we changed our poem into a video version with moving words. This magazine vastly outperformed our past online versions of our print magazine in page views, engagement rates and engagement times.