On a campus as bustling as Elizabethtown College, there are jobs that seemingly get done from thin air. For instance, the posters hung from the second floor of the Baugher Student Center (BSC) seem to just put themselves up. But that’s impossible, so who does this job? The job lies with the Elizabethtown College student assistant marketing coordinators, individuals who make the artistic masterpieces that remind students of upcoming events. This may come as a surprise, since it’s a common myth on campus that the clubs make their own posters to hang up.
Junior English Professional Writing Major Kaitlyn Gilmore is one of around eight or nine students who holds the title. She started working with the Office of Student Activities (OSA) before she even started her freshman year.
“At June orientation, I saw my boss Brooke [Hollinger] talking about it. I went up and talked to her about it, did an interview over the summer and got the job,” Gilmore said.
Ever since then, Gilmore has found immense joy in her job, seeing it as a big form of stress relief in times of hardship.
Gilmore gets to choose when and what she will be working on for any given week. Clubs and organizations submit requests three weeks before an event via a form on Jayweb. Those requests are then put into an excel sheet that the marketing coordinators have access to. Once Gilmore chooses to paint a poster, all she needs is to go to the office on the second floor of the BSC. Once at the office, all the paint and bulletin board paper she needs are at her disposal in a huge supply closet.
“Marketing Coordinator is a simple job,” Gilmore said. “It goes with your schedule easily.”
Currently, Gilmore’s favorite poster she’s ever made is this year’s poster for the High Library’s escape room. Be sure to keep an eye out for it, since the poster is set to be hung up in the following weeks.
Painting posters is not the only task Gilmore is responsible for. She is also behind the scenes of the postings on Etown’s social media accounts. When an event occurs on campus, Gilmore and her fellow marketing coordinators take videos and photos that later get posted on the college’s Instagram.
When asked about downsides of the job, Gilmore struggled to find any.
“I get paint on my clothes, and sometimes I write slanted, so the letters get increasingly small, and there’s not enough time to remake it,” Gilmore said.
On the flip side, when asked about the upsides of the job, Gilmore listed several instances and things she likes. Gilmore expressed gratitude for her boss and her fellow coworkers.
“It’s such a nice community of people who just want to sit there and have fun,” she said.
As with many workplaces mainly consisting of younger adults, some lighthearted tomfoolery is bound to happen.
“Last year, one of the people did pyramids from ‘Dance Moms’ with different reasons why someone is placed where they are. We’d spend five minutes at the beginning of every meeting going over it,” Gilmore said.
When questioned about if she believes others should apply to be an assistant marketing coordinator, she responded with a resounding yes.
“Definitely apply. We do applications mainly in the spring semester for over the summer,” Gilmore said.
For any questions about student assistant marketing coordinators, contact Brooke Hollinger at hollingerbrooke@etown.edu.
