Cool Cate: Kylie Copeland
Q&A by Ace larkin
Kylie Copeland is a student and a social media coordinator for the university. She is frequently present at events for Central Washington University and also was the president of the CWU Cosplay club.
Q: What is your position?
A: I am the student social media coordinator with Marcom
Q: What do you do with your position?
A: If I had to chalk it up into two different aspects, it would be the office work, and then the event coverage. So, office work kind of consists of emailing with other departments and the archives, getting photos and information about, like, we do our Throwback Thursdays every Thursday to talk about past events and or people or buildings that used to be on campus.
So it's a lot of curating posts that we schedule out months in advance, as well as making TikToks slash Instagram reels around campus, so I will come up with ideas to either show people what's happening on campus or encourage people to come and apply to Central, because my job also entails not only running the Central Washington University's official Instagram, but also running the admissions pages.
That's kind of more of the office work, and then as far as the event coverage goes, I show up to the events most of the time. I will either record a small video or post about the event prior, it'll probably be around several hours prior to the event. I'll show up to the event, I'll interact with students, get some photos of them participating in the event, maybe show some of the food if there's food at the event. Overall kind of show students, both incoming and current students, just what we have available on campus.
Q: How do you balance your job and being a student?
A: I'm really thankful for my boss, Tristine. Shout out Christine. She pretty much lets me set my own schedule, so within the hours of eight to five, unless it's regarding an event. Then if it's an event I have to go, obviously, when the event is being held. But other than that, the 20 hours a week for work, I set it out, probably a couple weeks in advance, what the goal is, and I'm able to like flex that as flight blocks come up, as Sims come up, as I need to change it, which is really helpful to me, but for me it's all about time management.
My Outlook schedule has every single event or meeting or even social thing that I'm doing blocked out in a time, so when people ask me if I'm available or if there's an event I have to cover, not only do I get an Outlook notification 15 minutes beforehand, but I also have something I can reference throughout the day to see where I'm supposed to be at.
Q: You also have a segment called CW-You that you also are a part of. What exactly goes into filming a CW-You?
CW-You, is like a little podcast that my boss wanted to start, and honestly, they're one of my favorite parts of the job. So, pretty much what occurs is we don't really plan anything out in advance.We have the date that we're going to film in the location we're going to film, whether that be the welcome barbecue or the SURC pit. Oh, the MCC, and so we'll show up to those events. We'll bring our backdrop and our two chairs in a little wagon. Once the camera's all set up, it is pretty much my job to go and find a willing victim for me to sit down and just ask the most absurd, random questions that really don't have anything to do with education at all, just to kind of, we wanted something to post on the main account that was more directed towards students, so it was like student on student interaction, and I've been having a blast with them, just because of all the fun people I've gotten to meet, but they're super low stakes, and it's just a really fun outlet for other students on campus to get to maybe see some other like-minded students on campus.
Q: Do you have one piece of advice for anyone that wants to take up this position after you leave?
Yeah, so we are hiring right now. Hopefully I get to be present in those interviews. Tristeen says I might, so fingers crossed. But if anyone's looking to take up the student social media coordinator job with Marcom after I leave, I would recommend really focus on public speaking and rejection therapy. There will be times when you're like, okay, I gotta go get videos filming students on campus doing X event or taking pictures of them at the Mother's Day event, and you really have to be okay with people saying, "No, I don't want my picture taken, I don't want to be posted, I don't want to participate in this video,” because that's totally okay. But you do have to ask consent before you film or record them, so you have to be okay with trying to film a video, and the first four people you asked to participate saying no.
Q: Is there anything else that you would like to say?
Go to student events. Student events are not only how you meet people, but how you can almost network in a way. If you don't get out there and see what opportunities might be available to you, and you don't get out there and find different majors, but people that are like-minded as you. Your circle can get kind of small, and I would always encourage people to go make new friends. You never know who you're going to meet. You might meet someone really cool, and they might end up being your best friend for life.
So yeah, go to events, they're fun and [almost always] free.
This Q&A was edited for clarity and length.