by Dick Peterson, Catalyst Editor

The Office of Public Relations needs some advice.

More specifically, the people whose job it is to keep information circulating among faculty, employees and students need to know what you think would make The Catalyst a better communication tool. What would you like to see in your Catalyst newspaper when you pick it up each week?

Sixteen years ago Gilbert B. Bradham, M.D., walked into the Office of Public Relations and announced that what this university needs is a newspaper.

Bradham, who is now MUSC’s dean of Student Life, saw a solution to what others only saw as a problem. They saw the growing pains of a small academic medical center in the southeast corner of a poor southern state. Bradham saw a pressing need for communication in an institution anchored in more than 150 years of history, but on its way to greatness.

If encouraging communication within the campus community was the answer in 1982, it’s even more the answer now. MUSC’s accelerating rate of growth demands more effective communication, both in the delivery of information and in the opportunity to express ideas in an open forum.

So, since that day in 1982:

• The Catalyst has expanded its coverage of people, events, issues, and medical and scientific advances at MUSC.
• In 1993 it doubled its number of issues by becoming a weekly publication.
• It has negotiated with its publisher, first for spot color and now front page color photos for every issue.
• Catalyst pick-up points have increased from an original five locations on campus to more than 25 and the number is still growing as new construction places new demands on circulation.
• In February 1996, The Catalyst launched Catalyst Online, a weekly Internet version of its print publication with the added advantage of unlimited space, color photos, and searchable archives for past stories.
• The MUSC Bluesheet, which will be a year old in April, lists scientific events and seminars campus-wide with an aim to stimulating interest and demonstrating the wide variety of intellectual offerings available at MUSC.

Here are some improvements being planned:

• To get The Catalyst closer to more people and thereby increase readership, details are being worked out to distribute weekly to departments by campus mail. Most of the usual pick-up locations will remain, but smaller, more attractive newspaper racks will replace those currently in use.
• Gradually bring many of the department newsletters and small specialty publications like Currents, Timeline, Lifeline and Bluesheet into The Catalyst pages to give readers a single news source. Evidence of MUSC’s phenomenal growth can be seen in the increasing number of newsletters, most of which are printed in the MUSC Print Shop and distributed by campus mail. The cost is significant, not to mention the flow of paper in the campus mail system and across desks throughout the campus.

But here’s where the Office of Public Relations needs feedback. Rolling other publications into The Catalyst is a major step, and convincing those who publish the newsletters it’s the best thing to do requires documentation. They want to know that’s what people really want.

So a survey is going out, asking faculty, employees and students at MUSC what they read, what they would like to read, and what would make The Catalyst a better communication tool. Please let your opinion count. Take the few minutes required to fill out the form and send it in through campus mail.

The information will be compiled and reported in an upcoming issue of The Catalyst.