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ommunicating effectively with the outside world is not always a priority for university institutions, but a failure to do so can have adverse effects, and the University of Malta (UoM) is no stranger to this. The UoM’s importance as an educational institution cannot be overstated. Malta’s health structures, its education systems, and a whole lot more depend on people it has helped educate. However, this has helped fuel perceptions that the University is little more than a glorified school, that its academics focus solely on teaching, and that any research that might take place is inconsequential.

Science in the City 2015
Photo by Elisa von Brockdorff

This is far from the truth, but the message was up until recently not reaching the public effectively. With this in mind, the Rector, Prof. Juanito Camilleri, pushed for the publication of a magazine focusing on research activity at the UoM. The first issue, Research Matters, came out in December 2011. The second issue came out six months later, but by then despite the short lapse of time, the magazine was unrecognisable. The reason was that the UoM brought in two full-timers—editor Dr Edward Duca and graphic designer Jean Claude Vancell—to handle the publication. The new duo felt that the original magazine needed an overhaul to make it appeal to a wider audience. The magazine was reinvented, with Duca crediting US magazines Wired and Scientific American as inspiration. Accordingly, the new publication looked the part—‘like a commercial magazine, one that you would buy,’ in Duca’s words—and given a catchier name: Think.

All that remained was for Think to be approved: ‘the rector could have blocked it, and people [at the UoM] thought I could lose my job, because it was too big of a change… but you cannot introduce such a change step by step,’ Duca recounts. As it turns out, however, ‘the rector loved it, and gave it his stamp of approval.’ ‘In fact,’ Duca adds, ‘I almost wish I received more feedback from him.’

Fifteen editions of Think—four issues a year—have since been published, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. One concern, Duca observes, is that the magazine may look ‘a bit too slick. We questioned whether this means that it makes it lose a degree of authenticity, but I believe it doesn’t. It’s just good design, not overly sensational or promotional […], it makes you want to pick it up,’ he says. ‘This is what the University deserves, a high-end magazine that effectively communicates what it does.’

This does not mean, however, that there is no room for improvement. Boosting advertising revenue is a challenge, not least because the policy is to only accept adverts that are appropriate for a magazine of this nature, and this also limits, among other things, Think’s ability to recruit freelancers. The magazine’s distribution could also be more efficient: at present, Duca remarks, the magazine cannot be found ‘in the waiting rooms of banks, clinics, and hospital: the places where people would want a magazine to read.’

Bringing science to the city

The first few months working at Think proved particularly hectic, not least because Duca was concurrently organising another public engagement activity: the first edition of Science in the City, Malta’s science and arts festival which encompasses the EU’s European Researchers’ Night, which involves hundreds of events in cities across Europe dedicated to celebrating research.

Photo by www.ICreatemotionStudio.com and Elisa von Brockdorff

As one can imagine, organising an event involving activities across Malta’s 16th century capital city is no easy task. Currently, the organisation involves a core team of four, as well as an artistic consultant. A lot of the logistical arrangements are now outsourced, which was not the case the first time round. ‘After that experience, we became cleverer, better at organising things,’ Duca notes. At present, planning typically begins as soon as the previous event finishes, and the team is now planning to start preparing two to three years in advance.

During the first edition, Duca estimated that 10,000 people would attend the event, although others were more sceptical, telling him that if 1,000 made it, he should be pleased. As it turns out, 12,000 people made it to Valletta that night, and since then, the crowds have nearly doubled.

The event has evolved from year to year, partly to provide crowds with a different experience each time, but also in response to feedback. After the first year, greater effort was placed on providing interactive events for the young, for instance: but this has led to calls for interactive events for older audiences, which, Duca notes, are a tricky prospect.

The biggest challenge, Duca observes, is achieving a balance between good art and good science. ‘Sometimes you get good science but the art is lacking, or else you get good art that does not communicate science well,’ he says. Funding is another challenge: the event benefits from EU funds, but efforts to secure other sources of funding are ongoing.

Nevertheless, the event, as well as Think, are helping to address a gap in science communication, which is arguably key to ensuring that more people develop an interest in science as a career choice. But Duca also emphasises that a greater public understanding of science helps bring about an informed democracy.

The event has evolved from year to year, partly to provide crowds with a different experience each time, but also in response to feedback.

The university’s newsroom

While Think has revolutionised the way the UoM communicates its accomplishments, Patricia Camilleri (director, Communications and Alumni Relations Office) and her colleagues spotted the need to upgrade how it communicates to its staff and students. The recent launch of Newspoint, the University’s news portal, seeks to do just that.

Photo by www.ICreatemotionStudio.com and Elisa von Brockdorff

It is not the UoM’s first such effort: it replaces the long-running News on Campus, which featured notices, events, and press releases issued by the University. In doing so, it was useful in letting staff and students know what was going on, but its age was increasingly showing, and it had become an information repository.

‘News on Campus served a very good purpose […] but everything has its shelf life,’ she observes. ‘We tried to make it as visually interesting as we could, within the website’s limitations, but there came the time for a change, not just in its look and feel, but also in its ethos […] something that does not simply serve as a notice board, but a portal that people would wish to look into proactively.’The inspiration for Newspoint was online news portals, rather than university websites. This vision is readily apparent when one looks at the redesigned website. Photography is given a greater priority than ever before, and videos are regularly published on the site: a videographer was taken on especially for this purpose. Updates are far more frequent, including an event page which is updated regularly.

But Newspoint, perhaps, is just the latest step forward in the way the University communicates. Technology has helped—for instance, it wasn’t that long ago that students had to check notice boards for exam results– but Camilleri, who has worked at the UoM for 25 years, also points out that mindsets have changed.
‘I remember back in 1991 going to a dean to ask for information, only for him to ask me “who wants it?”’ Think and Newspoint are the clearest evidence that such attitudes have been consigned to the past; the future has been engaged.