By Victoria Heckenlaible

The emergency gate was down in front of her office at Walter Webb Hall, and she had received numerous emergency alert text messages that Tuesday last September. Nyleva Corley knew crisis had hit campus.

On Sept. 28, 2010, mathematics sophomore Colton Tooley fired several rounds from an assault rifle before taking his own life in the Perry-Castaneda Library.

“I was afraid for the campus,” Corley said.

As the Web and new media manager for UT’s Office of Public Affairs, Corley and her department stepped into action with alerts on the University’s home page and updates on Twitter. By the end of the day, Corley said she and the public affairs office learned new media’s strengths and weaknesses when dealing with a crisis that involved informing tens of thousands of faculty, staff and students.

Photo by Lara Haase

“We used social media to post as quickly as possible and updated a worried community about the situation,” she said, adding that her office must communicate through multiple channels to send messages.

Corley calls herself a facilitator and a connector. Her job involves making connections within the University and effectively showcasing the campus to the outside world. She develops content for UT’s home page, manages the official Facebook page and acts as a liaison between the technology department and public affairs.

“My job is to tell the stories of the University,” she said. “We try to tell people about the University’s three missions: learning, research and community service.”

She said her favorite stories are those such as the January home page feature about Allen Bard, a professor in the College of Natural Sciences. The article showcases the chemistry and biology research Bard is doing to capture hydrogen for fuel. She said she loved bringing together Bard and College of Natural Sciences writer Daniel Oppenheimer to share this facet of UT.

“We are all about engagement,” Corley said. “We shed the institutional voice and talk as a person; we use our voice, not the school’s.”

Corley and Chris Latham, Web designer for Technology Resources, realized what they had learned about communicating during the crisis would be helpful for other communities experiencing potential emergencies. This March, they presented their realizations at SXSW’s Interactive Festival.

“What happened at UT was frightening,” Corley said. “We used [our communications experience] as a platform to discuss how we get emergency messages out quickly. We all need to focus on practicing the plans set into place so emotions can come second to what we need to do — just rely on muscle memory.”

Corley and Latham posted a detailed account of all communications that transpired during the crisis to show others what worked and what didn’t.

“I felt honored that people recognized the need for this discussion, and it felt good to put together something for others to take advantage of,” she said. The SXSW presentation centered on attendees discussing improvements and effective connections.

In the future, Corley said she hopes to make a collage of campus available through a platform such as Tumblr. Such a platform is free of content specifications and allows for a wide range of media.

“We would be aggregating things you find — a found project,” Corley said. “It would take bits and pieces of everything around campus — a photo in the communications school, an audio clip of LBJ or a poem from the English department.”

Corley’s job is to funnel representing voices from an 80,000-person population to appropriate outlets. Here the voices shape the campus’ image and inspire greater achievements within.

“We gather all UT’s social media channels in order to promote groups and to run collaboration,” Corley said. “We tap into the people on campus.”