While responsibility for developing and disseminating most University publications and communications generally falls to the University Communications and Marketing office, numerous checks and balances help to assure that the information conveyed to the public is honest, accurate and complete. University Communications and Marketing works closely with the Institutional Research, Registrar's, Bursar's, and Admissions offices to create publications, respond to media requests, and submit information to regional and national publications and guidebooks.

Sensitive to individual privacy, the University adheres to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (also known as the Buckley Amendment). All students have the opportunity to request that certain information about themselves be kept private and that they be assigned an identification number other than their social security number.

We follow established affirmative action and nondiscrimination guidelines in all publications and communications involving admissions and recruitment of both students and staff. A 1993 Statement of Nondiscrimination for Publications specifies language to be used in all University publications and electronic advertising.

A significant amount of information of interest to employees is transmitted from the President's Advisory Council (PAC) through vice presidents to directors and then to individual employees. For faculty, information is transmitted from PAC to Deans' Council, then to School Councils or department chairs, and finally to individual faculty. There are two reasons this cascading communications approach is problematic. First, there are often so many links in these chains that there are many opportunities for one to be broken. Second, employees are finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish critical information from that of less importance, so important information is sometimes lost. For example, annual resource requests must be linked to Millersville's mission, vision, and institutional goals but employees proposing resource allocations are frequently unaware of these statements (see Chapter 2).

Our Web site http://www.millersville.edu, created in 1997, allows information about Millersville to be disseminated easily around the world. It enables prospective students to apply for admission and current students to make a variety of inquiries, such as which course sections are open for enrollment and when recruiters will be interviewing on campus. We have developed guidelines and standards to which all official University homepages must conform. These guidelines are under continuous review, and the Web site has been recently redesigned for improved access and usability.