Office for Student Affairs

Student News Updates – March 2021

Beginning in March 2021, the following changes will be made to Student News. The Office for Student Affairs will be hosting a stakeholder presentation on Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 1:00pm to review these changes and answer questions. Please RSVP for this session here. Presentation slides will be shared here following the stakeholder session.

Updated Newsletter Format

Student News will be divided into two post types:

  • Announcements: information-based, non-event posts that will be published on two submitter-selected dates.
  • Events: date-specific events and activities that will be published in all occurrences of Student News for approximately two week prior to the event date as part of an Upcoming Events digest.

Changes:

  • Reduction from the current nine newsletter categories to two. Events will include event tags to identify the event type.
  • Newsletter will include a chronological digest of all submitted events for the upcoming two weeks.

New Submission Form

In order to capture the necessary information for the new newsletter format, we will be launching a new Student News submission form on Tuesday, March 16. The submission form will be temporarily unavailable from Friday, March 12 through Monday March 15 while we make these updates. The submission link will remain the same: hsph.me/submitstudentnews

  • Announcement submissions will be largely that same as the current format. Submission fields will include title, subtitle, body, URL and/or contact email, and two publish dates. Announcements can include 500 characters of text in the body.
  • Event submissions will include title, subtitle, date, time, event category, location (if applicable), short description, URL, and contact email. Events can include a 280 character short description. Events will be published in all occurrences of Student News for approximately two weeks prior to the event date.

View a sample of each submission format below.

If you have already submitted your post to the current submission form, you do not need to take any action. The Office for Student Affairs will migrate your submission to the new format and your post will be included in Student News.

Changes:

  • New submission form to launch on March 16.
  • Previous submission form to be retired on March 12. Student News submissions will be temporarily unavailable from March 12 through March 15.
  • Event submissions do not need to select publish dates. Events will be published in all occurrences of Student News for two weeks prior to the event date.

Reduced Publication Schedule

Student News will be published once per week during the academic term on Fridays at 12:00pm. Submissions must be received by Thursday at 12:00pm.

Changes:

  • Student News publication schedule will be reduced from the current three-day schedule (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) to one day (Friday).
  • Submissions must be received by Thursday at 12:00pm.

Sample Format Types

Announcement Title

Announcement Subtitle (optional)

The announcement body can include up to 500 characters of text. Announcements are generally short, information-based communications with the target audience being Harvard Chan students. Announcements may include important notifications, need-to-know content, funding opportunities, upcoming deadlines, and volunteer opportunities. Announcements will be published on two submitter-selected occurrences. All announcements will be required to include a website or a contact email, or may include both.
(for reference: this description is 498 characters)

<Click here to learn more about : [Announcement Title]>
For more information contact: <contact email address>

Event Title

Event Subtitle (optional)

Date | Start Time – End Time (end time optional)
Virtual or In-Person | Event Website or Event Location
Event Category

The event description is optional and can include up to 280 characters of text. Events will be published in all occurrences of Student News for two weeks prior to the event date. Events will be required to include a website or contact email address, or may include both.
(for reference: this description is 270 characters)

<Click here to learn more about : [Event Title]>
For more information contact: <contact email address>