University Relations

Bringing Real World, Practical Guidance, Experience, Resources, and Opportunities to the Next Generation of Employees

The University Relations experience provides a centralized destination for students, interns, co-ops, recruiters, hiring managers, and program stakeholders to access information and resources throughout the university recruiting and internship journey. It brings recruiting guidance, program expectations, onboarding resources, development opportunities, design-thinking tools, showcase presentations, and events into one connected experience.

Core capabilities

Centralize University Relations information, resources, and program guidance.
Support campus recruiting, internship, and co-op program operations.
Help students and interns understand expectations, development opportunities, and available support.
Provide hiring managers and recruiters with tools, process guidance, and relevant program information.
Promote learning and professional development through design-thinking activities, workshops, and customized learning paths.
Highlight student accomplishments through end-of-semester showcase presentations.
Provide visibility into University Relations events, activities, and program updates.

Intended audience and value

The experience is designed for students, interns, co-ops, recruiters, hiring managers, University Relations staff, and other stakeholders involved in campus recruiting and early-career development.

By organizing program information and resources in one accessible experience, University Relations supports a more consistent recruiting and internship journey, improves access to guidance and tools, strengthens collaboration between students and employees, and gives participants clearer opportunities to learn, contribute, and showcase their work.

Screenshots

Tools/Skills

Bootstrap5 HTML5 CSS3 JS Massonry Photoshop

Project Overview

The CCI University Relations website was designed as a centralized experience for connecting students, interns, co-ops, hiring managers, recruiters, and University Relations stakeholders.

The site supports the full program experience–from recruiting and onboarding, to professional development, design-thinking resources, hiring-manager guidance, events, and end-of-semester Showcase Presentations. Its central promise is captured in the message: "We deliver life’s most important connections."

The experience also communicates the program’s broader mission: establishing a robust campus-recruiting strategy and operations while maximizing the student and employee experience during on-campus recruiting and assignments with Cox Communications, Inc.

Case-Study Type: UX/UI Design

Solution Type: HTML / CSS / JS

Understanding the opportunity

University Relations needed to support several audiences with different goals and responsibilities. Students and co-ops needed to understand the program, prepare for their assignments, build professional and communication skills, and find resources to help them succeed. Hiring managers needed tools, expectations, forms, and guidance for creating meaningful assignments and evaluating potential new hires.

The program included two educational tracks:

General Business Internships: A 12-week internship program.
Technology Cooperatives: A co-op program offered during summer, fall, and spring semesters.

The experience needed to connect recruiting, onboarding, development, manager support, design thinking, community engagement, and student showcases without making the program feel fragmented.

The UX Challenge:

How do we create one clear University Relations experience that supports students, co-ops, hiring managers, recruiters, and program stakeholders across the full recruiting and assignment journey?

This framing influenced the navigation model, audience segmentation, onboarding content, resource structure, development framework, presentation archive, and visual system.

Audience needs and design challenges

The website had to serve multiple audiences with overlapping but distinct needs.

Interns and co-ops

Students needed to:

Understand the difference between an internship and cooperative education.
Learn how to prepare for their first day and assignment.
Develop professional, communication, and industry-awareness skills.
Build mentoring relationships with hiring managers.
Understand workplace etiquette, communication expectations, and project responsibilities.
Find opportunities to participate in volunteer activities, networking, training, and community-building programs.
Prepare for Showcase Presentations at the end of the semester.

Hiring managers and recruiters

Hiring managers needed to:

Understand their responsibilities in creating a successful intern or co-op experience.
Access the Hiring Manager Toolkit and payroll reference materials.
Evaluate an intern or co-op.
Develop an intern/co-op plan.
Terminate an intern/co-op when necessary.
Create meaningful opportunities to identify and develop future talent.

Program and community stakeholders

University Relations needed to communicate its mission, team, events, resources, and recruiting operations while reinforcing the importance of developing new talent for Cox.

The design challenge was to provide clear entry points for each audience while maintaining one connected program experience.

Discovery inputs and content strategy

The available project information shows a content-architecture approach centered on audience needs, program stages, and recurring activities.

The content model organized information around:

Recruiting and university relationships
Internship and co-op education
First-day preparation and onboarding
Professional and communication skills
Industry awareness
Hiring-manager responsibilities
Design-thinking methods and tools
Showcase Presentations
Semester activities and events
Team and contact information

The content also established four experience commitments that shaped the program narrative:

Understand: Support community service, connection, and awareness of the student experience.
Value: Provide networking, peer support, executive speakers, discounts, fitness, and training opportunities.
Develop: Offer Birkman self-assessment and customized learning paths.
Challenge: Encourage students to showcase their skills, overcome fear of public speaking, and grow through workshops and training.

This structure transformed a broad set of program materials into a navigable experience that could support both quick reference and deeper exploration.

Experience strategy and audience journeys

The strategy was to organize the website around the major journeys users needed to complete: learn about the program, get started, perform well, support participants, and share outcomes.

The experience supports several connected paths:

Student journey: Understand the program, prepare for the first day, build skills, participate in the assignment, and present the work.
Co-op journey: Understand cooperative education, navigate alternating work semesters, develop skills, and contribute across assignments.
Hiring-manager journey: Learn expectations, access tools and forms, plan the assignment, evaluate performance, and support potential new hires.
Program journey: Communicate the mission, introduce the team, share activities, manage resources, and strengthen the recruiting pipeline.
Community journey: Connect students and employees through volunteer opportunities, networking, speakers, training, events, and showcases.

The strategy was guided by five principles:

Audience clarity: Give each major audience a clear path to the information most relevant to them.
Journey-based organization: Structure content around what users need to do, not only around internal program departments.
Development through experience: Connect workplace participation to professional, communication, and industry growth.
Resources at the point of need: Place tools, manuals, forms, and design-thinking materials near the tasks they support.
Connection and visibility: Make the people, community, events, and student outcomes visible throughout the experience.

This strategy positioned the website as both a program overview and an operational resource for navigating the University Relations experience.

Information architecture and screen structure

The primary experience areas included:

Connections homepage: Introduced the University Relations mission, program value, and the idea of building fulfilling careers across generations.
About and University Relations overview: Explained the program’s mission, recruiting strategy, student experience, and Understand, Value, Develop, and Challenge framework.
Meet the Team: Introduced University Relations leaders and team members through profile cards and More About Me actions.
Interns & Co-Ops: Explained internship and cooperative education, program structure, development expectations, and getting-started guidance.
Getting Started: Provided first-day preparation steps such as creating a ticket, requesting space, preparing for work, and welcoming a new employee.
Hiring Manager Hub: Presented expectations, toolkits, payroll references, evaluation forms, development plans, and termination resources.
Design Thinking: Introduced the method and provided a step-by-step framework covering Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
Presentations: Showcased student work and archived past presentations by semester.
Events Calendar: Provided a location for program activities and recurring engagement opportunities.

The information architecture was designed to help users enter through an audience need, a program question, a task, a development resource, or an event and still reach a clear next step.

Key design decisions and visual system

The design translated the program strategy into a structured, welcoming, and resource-oriented experience.

Key decisions included:

Establishing a consistent Cox University Relations header and navigation across all pages.
Using audience-specific navigation labels rather than hiding student and hiring-manager resources inside a generic resource library.
Creating section headings such as Connections, University Relations, Meet the Team, Interns & Co-Ops, Hiring Manager Hub, Step-by-Step, and Showcase Presentations.
Using profile cards and More About Me buttons to make the program team accessible and human.
Presenting onboarding content as numbered steps to make the first-day journey easier to follow.
Providing focused resource panels for hiring-manager forms, toolkits, payroll references, and support.
Representing the design-thinking process through a step-by-step sequence and empathy-map artifact.
Using a visual showcase and semester-based archive to make student contributions visible.
Combining photography, diagrams, colorful banners, cards, forms, and utility links to support both inspiration and task completion.

The design intent was to make University Relations feel welcoming for students, useful for hiring managers, and credible as a strategic recruiting and talent-development program.

Lessons and design considerations

The available source material emphasizes several principles that are important to the success of the experience:

Design for the full journey, not only the recruiting moment.
Separate student and hiring-manager needs while keeping them within one connected system.
Put operational resources near the tasks they support.
Make development expectations explicit rather than assuming users know how to succeed.
Give students a visible way to demonstrate the impact of their work.
Use team profiles, events, networking, and community resources to make the program feel human.
Connect educational content to practical actions, tools, and next steps.

The central lesson is that a university-relations experience must support both people and operations. Students need belonging, preparation, development, and recognition; hiring managers need structure, tools, and confidence; and the organization needs a repeatable path from recruiting to long-term talent development.