Brand guide for Augustana leaders
Your leadership shapes the Augustana brand
Use this guide to represent Augustana with clarity, equip your team and extend the college’s strongest ideas through every message, presentation and public interaction.
Clear, consistent communication helps your area build trust, support recruitment and partnerships, and make its contribution easier for others to understand.
Find the right resource Work with C&M
Every message, presentation, conversation and public post helps shape how people understand Augustana.
As a leader, you influence how your team connects its work to the college’s mission, how audiences understand Augustana’s value, and how confidently others represent the institution. This guide gives you practical tools to represent Augustana, equip your team and carry the college’s strongest ideas to the people who need to hear them.
The Augustana brand in brief
Augustana provides a challenging education in the liberal arts and sciences, empowering students to take on meaningful work and learn through experience that delivers results.
That promise comes to life through close faculty relationships, engaged learning and partnerships that connect knowledge to action. Across campus, our role is to make that value clear, credible and consistent.
When you communicate on behalf of Augustana, emphasize:
- students taking early responsibility for putting knowledge to action
- faculty advocacy that creates opportunity
- learning that connects purpose, preparation and service
- outcomes and evidence that show the value of an Augustana education
Explore the Augustana brand:
Plan your communication
Strong communication begins with three questions.
Audience
Whom are you trying to reach?
Action
What do you want them to know, believe, decide or do?
Proof
What evidence will make the message credible?
Use these questions before creating a presentation, announcing an initiative, writing a post or requesting support from Communication and Marketing. They help clarify the purpose of the communication and focus effort on what will move the audience.
What are you trying to do?
Choose the task that best matches your need.
Additional resources coming soon.
| Give a presentation | Write or send a document | Represent Augustana professionally |
Use templates and institutional language to present Augustana clearly and consistently.
| Create professional communications that reflect Augustana’s voice and visual identity.
| Keep your professional presence aligned with the college across everyday channels.
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| Share an Augustana story | Equip your team | Promote an initiative or event |
Extend the reach of people, ideas and outcomes that strengthen Augustana’s reputation. | Give employees the language, tools and expectations to represent Augustana with confidence.
Share this guide with the colleague responsible for communication in your area. | Use the right pathway based on the audience, intended action and institutional impact.
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Language you can use
Use a version of one of these descriptions when introducing Augustana in presentations, professional biographies, partnership materials and other external communications.
Augustana in one sentence
Augustana College prepares students for lives of leadership and service through a challenging education in the liberal arts and sciences, close faculty relationships, and experiences that connect learning to action.
Short description
Augustana College is a private liberal arts college in Rock Island, Illinois, where students are trusted early with meaningful work. Here, we translate the liberal arts into active experiences that prepare graduates for leadership and service in the world as it evolves. Strong mentors, partnerships and project-based learning create the foundation for students to align their career paths with making a difference.
About Bold & Boundless
Bold & Boundless is Augustana College’s strategic plan to prioritize engaged learning, maximize student potential and connect through partnerships. It strengthens how students move from exploration to experience, build confidence and prepare to lead and serve in a changing world.
Connect your work to the Augustana story
Describe your work by naming the people it serves, the outcome it advances and the distinctive way it creates value.
Use this framework: [Area name] helps [audience] [achieve an outcome] through [distinctive approach], advancing Augustana’s commitment to [mission or strategic priority].
Example: The Academic Resource Collective helps students build confidence and strengthen their learning through coordinated academic support, advancing Augustana’s commitment to maximizing every student’s potential.
Support claims with proof
When describing Augustana or your area, pair broad claims with evidence.
Instead of: Augustana offers exceptional opportunities.
Try: Augustana students begin advanced research, clinical work, internships and community-based learning while they are still undergraduates.
Build your professional voice
Your professional presence can help Augustana’s ideas, expertise and impact reach audiences beyond campus. Use LinkedIn and other professional channels to:
- interpret changes in your field
- share insight from your work
- elevate student, faculty and community outcomes
- connect Augustana’s mission to timely questions
- recognize partnerships and people advancing important work
A simple framework for thought leadership
Before posting, consider:
What are you noticing?
Name the idea, change or question.
Why does it matter?
Explain the larger significance.
What is Augustana learning or doing?
Connect the insight to credible work, experience or evidence.
What should others consider?
Offer a useful takeaway, question or point of view.
Strong thought leadership contributes insight. It gives audiences a clearer understanding of the issue, your expertise and Augustana’s role.
See also
Know when to use a tool and when to contact C&M
Many communication needs can move quickly through approved templates, guidance and self-service resources. Others benefit from early partnership with Communication and Marketing.
Use these resources when you are:
- creating a routine presentation or document
- updating your email signature, biography or LinkedIn profile
- sharing an approved Augustana story
- promoting a recurring event or standard initiative
- equipping your team with brand-aligned tools
- adapting existing language for a familiar audience
Contact C&M when the work:
- is tied directly to enrollment, giving or reputation
- involves a major institutional announcement
- requires a new strategic message or campaign
- carries institutional sensitivity or risk
- includes media outreach or public response
- requires coordinated distribution across multiple channels
How C&M supports your work
C&M leads Strategic, high-impact, tied to enrollment, giving or reputation.
C&M guides Defined work of campus partners that benefit from targeted strategy, messaging or brand expertise.
C&M equips Repeatable work supported through templates, standards, tools and self-service resources.
Support level and timing are determined by the intended outcome, audience, complexity and distribution required.
Ready to work with C&M?
Bring Communication and Marketing in early when your work is tied to enrollment, giving, reputation, media or a major institutional announcement.