October 3, 2006

To:       Department Chairs and Administrative Team

From:   Molly Jahn

On October 12 we intend to send out the first edition of eCALS, our new electronic newsletter for the College's faculty and staff.  We intend to publish eCALS every other Thursday.

The purpose of eCALS is to provide an effective and efficient tool for internal communication.  One goal is to free up CALS Chair's meetings, previously devoted largely to announcements.  Another is to deliver important messages from the College and about the College directly to all faculty and staff, rather than relying on Chairs and Managers to convey this information.  The newsletter will also provide an easily accessible and permanent record of announcements and useful information (the newsletter will be archived online, searchable by date and category).  Finally, this newsletter should reduce the number of individual messages that you and your faculty will be receiving from Ag Hall.

One model that we're using is the Law School's newsletter, which can be found at http://www.law.wisc.edu/newsletter/.

I encourage you to send relevant information for the first edition as soon as possible via email to ecals@cals.wisc.edu .  Items for the October 12 edition should be submitted by October 6.

Suggestions for appropriate announcements include:

• Calls for proposals, giant procedures, and deadlines
• Human Resource and Business Service matters
• Opportunities for improvement of teaching/learning
  • Funding opportunities for innovative teaching
• Solicitation of proposals for:
  • Summer Course Instruction
  • Lab modernization
  • Credit outreach and extended timetable course support
• Events of interest and relevance to college wide audiences:
  • Opportunities for student interviews with company recruiters
  • Career Fair and Majors Fairs
  • Special guests and lectures