Tom Evelyn

A List
4/1/11

Tom Evelyn Named Vice President For Communications At St. Lawrence

CANTON - Tom Evelyn, a senior communications leader at Bucknell University who has more than 19 years of experience in higher education communications and journalism, has been named vice president for communications at St. Lawrence University, President William L. Fox announced today. Evelyn will begin his duties at St. Lawrence on June 20.

"Tom brings to this job everything we were after - great experience, a deep commitment to the liberal arts that make St. Lawrence special, and the highest integrity," President Fox said. "I am looking forward to working with him and am confident that the St. Lawrence campus and wider community is going to realize quickly what a special person he is."

Evelyn has most recently served as the senior director of news and media relations at Bucknell, where he has been a key leader in the university's communications and marketing efforts since 2007. He established and guided a news and media relations program that helped to promote and enhance Bucknell's reputation as a top undergraduate liberal arts university, working closely with faculty and senior administrators across the campus.

At Bucknell, he helped to develop and implement the university's communications and marketing strategy, digital communications strategy and social media guide, and led Bucknell's first strategic media relations plan, including a dramatic expansion in Bucknell's media presence. He has worked closely with faculty to place Bucknell stories, expert sources and op-ed columns in major national media, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR, CNN, the Associated Press and others, as well as coordinating a C-SPAN campus book talk and a live statewide public television broadcast of a faculty panel on the presidential election.

He created an online experts guide and various news features that highlight faculty expertise, implemented a system for tracking institutional media results, consulted on the redesign of the university's website and guided the launch of the university's Facebook and Twitter presences, various student blogs and other social media.

Evelyn previously served as interim assistant vice president and associate director of news and information at the University of Central Florida, where he helped direct the university's central media and public relations office from 2002 to 2007. There, he led a statewide media relations campaign with the other Florida public universities to improve state funding.

Before that, Evelyn worked for 10 years as a reporter and editor at newspapers in Florida and Georgia, covering a range of topics from government and politics to health and technology. He also served four years in the U.S. Navy as a cryptologist.

Evelyn has a B.S. in journalism with a minor in philosophy from the University of Florida and an M.A. in communication from the University of Central Florida.

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