2021 District 1 Rising Star
Keith Paul
Director of Communications and Marketing
Springfield Technical Community College
Springfield, MA
Keith Paul considers marketing a contact sport, bringing more than 20 years of experience to Springfield Technical Community College (STCC). He is responsible for more than a few college firsts, including a brand guidelines document, online virtual tour and online new student orientation. Paul led the process to modernize all collateral, built a robust video content library on YouTube and enabled the marketing team and campus partners to use self-service tools like Microsoft Office templates, Canva, Venngage and ResourceSpace.
Paul led the transformation of digital marketing at STCC beyond social media and SEO to third-party engagement tools like MyBaseGuide, Merit Pages, Emsi career coach and Naviance. He used data-driven strategies to launch STCC’s first-ever CRM and marketing automation platforms and deploying targeted SEM for all of STCC’s academic programs.
Under his leadership, STCC is reaping ever-higher levels of local, regional and national news coverage, as well as recognition on social media. For his National Pi Day project, Paul contacted STEM faculty to gather students to create an STCC-branded video to explain how pi affects our lives. The video was fun and educational, a hit on social media.
“Keith brings boundless energy, as well as creative and unique ideas, into any room,” writes Kerry Ferrero, STCC’s coordinator of design and production services, in Paul’s nomination letter. “Always scrappy, he’s quick to make sure the team gets credit for work even he might have done on his own. Keith is a great friend-raiser who shows interest in everyone and values their ideas.”
Before joining STCC, Paul built the University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst’s first professional digital marketing team before helping the campus integrate marketing and advancement. He later served in a leadership role in enrollment marketing for continuing and professional education at the university. An early adopter and advocate for online learning, Paul also taught journalism at UMass Amherst for 12 years.