University Communications Launches New Events Calendar

Campus community members now have access to an improved, convenient and easy-to-use resource that allows them to promote and publicize events and stay abreast of the many happenings at UC Merced.

University Communications recently launched a revamped campus Events Calendar. Faculty, staff and students can add events for their departments, divisions, schools or clubs using the calendar’s new interface, which is intuitive and user-friendly.

“We are excited to offer this tool to the campus community,” said James Leonard, UC Merced’s director of news and social media. “This calendar has the potential to become the go-to place for the promotion of all events happening at our campus.”

With the new Events Calendar, users can:

• subscribe to receive notifications of upcoming events;
• tag events, which makes it easier for them to appear in more than one category and be seen by specific audiences; and
• share events on social media or add them Outlook, Google Calendar and iCal.

The Web team within University Communications worked on the project and enlisted users from across the campus — in particular, those who frequently use the calendar — to test its use and features.

In the next phase of the Events Calendar’s development, departments, schools, divisions and student clubs will be able to pull events relevant to their organizations from the calendar onto their websites.

Instructions for how to add events to the new Events Calendar and submit feedback are posted on the University Communications website.

Meanwhile, users have already begun to share feedback about the calendar. University Communications is developing a process for collecting and evaluating users’ suggestions. Once a substantial amount of feedback has been collected, communications staff members will perform a comprehensive evaluation and update the calendar accordingly. Feedback can be sent via email to University Communications.