NorthWest Arkansas Community College (NWACC) provides quality and affordable higher education to empower lives and strengthen communities within Northwest Arkansas and surrounding areas.

As the largest community college in Arkansas, NWACC is recognized as a leader in education. NWACC offers a full range of associate degrees, certificates and workforce training programs that prepare students for rewarding futures and careers.

NWACC employees are dedicated to fostering a diverse educational community and cultural learning environment that supports student success.

The Director of Communications and Public Relations, reporting to the Chief of Staff and Executive Director of Government and Public Relations, focuses on enhancing the college’s visibility within the Northwest Arkansas region and beyond, and engages with the college campus community and the community at large. This is accomplished through messaging, media advisories, press releases and a range of internal and external communication strategies, initiatives, and campaigns. The director also supports government and public relations and collaborates with Marketing & Creative Services to enhance the college’s marketing efforts.

Essential Duties

Communications and Media:

• Builds and maintains relationships within the college community to facilitate consistent and creative storytelling.
• Prepares and disseminates internal communications to ensure timely information flow within the college community.
• Responds to media inquiries in conjunction with the official college spokesperson and other designated NWACC personnel.
• Cultivates and maintains strong and positive media relationships, secures news placements, and maintains updated news release distribution lists to adapt to changes in the media environment.
• Prepares regular news and feature stories about the college and staff, faculty, and student achievements for general news media placement and social media posting contributing to the college's promotion.
• Tracks and records media interactions and responses to evaluate the success of communication efforts, while providing excellent customer service to internal communication clients.
• Coordinates with NWACC Marketing and Creative Services to help maintain a consistent editorial voice and style across all college communications, advertising, and marketing.
• Coordinates with the Board or Trustees Liaison to issue notifications ensuring compliance with the Freedom of Information Act.
• Assists in crisis response management by developing messaging and communication plans to effectively inform the college community and external stakeholders.
• Performs any other related duties as required or assigned.

Public Relations:

• Assists with developing and maintaining relationships with associations, chambers of commerce, education and professional institutes, and non-profits.
• Monitors external organizations’ membership requirements and benefits, schedules meetings, coordinates event attendance, and tracks participation.
• Represents the college at meetings and events of external organizations.

• Assists with developing and maintaining strong relationships with federal, state, and local government officials to support the college’s priorities and initiatives.
• As requested, coordinates meetings and discussions between college leadership and government representatives to ensure alignment and collaboration.
• Prepares briefing materials, reports, and presentations as needed.

Rate of Pay: $58,757 annualized

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Excellent, practiced interpersonal, oral, and written communications and presentation skills
• Strong organizational, attention to detail, and time management skills
• Ability to curate purposeful, engaging content on faculty achievements and scholarship, student culture that inspires and increases audience engagement
• Ability to set and meet deadlines
• Creative ability
• Dependable and punctual with the ability to stay on task and current with projects
• Ability to work well in a team setting
• Highly motivated self-starter with the ability to work independently

Physical Demands and Work Environment

The physical demands and work environment characteristics described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Physical demands:

In the work environment described, position requires sitting at a desk and utilizing a computer and a telephone for prolonged periods of time and good eye/hand coordination, bending, and stretching for filing, and physical stamina to lift a minimum of 10 pounds. Visual acuity to review written materials is required for this job. Additionally, this position requires meeting the public and the organization in a professional and courteous manner.

Work environment:

Work will be performed in an office environment. Work will be performed in an office environment full-time (Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.) The noise level in the work environment is typically low to moderate. Occasional evening and weekend work hours and travel will be required.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in journalism, public relations, marketing, or related field from an accredited institution of higher education
• At least three years full-time experience in marketing, public relations, or communications
• Professional experience in one or more of the following: PR writing, content marketing, social media, digital strategy, media relations, and editing
• Highly proficient in Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher)

Applicable equivalencies may be considered on the above minimum qualifications.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in journalism, public relations, marketing, or related field from an accredited institution of higher education
• At least five years full-time experience in marketing, public relation, or communications
• Recent experience creating and implementing a comprehensive communication strategy.
• Experience in external communications in corporate, nonprofit, or higher education organizations
• Experience with development campaigns and solicitations

NWACC is an Equal Opportunity Employer, please see our EEO policy.