In recognition of creating and executing outstanding initiatives in marketing and community engagement, Trent University has been awarded two top prizes from the Canadian Council for the Advancement of Education (CCAE) in the prestigious 2016 Prix d’Excellence competition – a silver award in the Best Community Outreach Initiative category for Trent’s 50 Talks for 50 Years, and a bronze in the Best Use of Multi-Media category for the Challenge the Way You Think marketing and branding campaign.

The CCAE Prix d’Excellence awards, which were presented at the CCAE national conference in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan June 7-10, 2016, recognize outstanding achievements in alumni affairs, public affairs, development, and overall institutional advancement in universities across Canada.

Trent’s 50 Talks for 50 Years initiative, the silver medalist in the Best Community Outreach Initiative category, creates and executes fifty talks to local elementary and high school classrooms by the University’s leading faculty members. The talks, which originally started in 2015 as part of Trent University's 50th anniversary celebrations, are a way for Trent University to give back to the community by sharing the University’s passion for research, teaching and learning. Due to the success of the campaign, and the positive feedback from teachers and students at schools in the community, the 50 Talks initiative has become an ongoing way to engage with the greater Peterborough community.

“The 50 Talks initiative was conceived of and delivered by Trent faculty. There are many ways that Trent faculty make contributions to our community, including conducting research on local issues and as volunteers with local causes. In fact, a recent internal survey found that Trent staff and faculty are involved with more than 250 local groups,” said Julie Davis, vice-president of External Relations and Advancement at Trent. “We are proud of this initiative and thrilled that it has been recognized by the CCAE with this national award.”

The judges praised the award-winning 50 Talks initiative for being an “intriguing concept” that “came off as a signature event that goes beyond tradition community relations practices.”

Taking home bronze in the Best Use of Multi-Media category, Trent University’s Challenge the Way You Think campaign successfully turned what was previously a reputation-building series of print ads into a strategic, high impact multi-media campaign for student recruitment. Using the powerful tagline Challenge The Way You Think, the University worked with a boutique design firm to come up with a beautiful and well-targeted campaign that communicates various aspects of the Trent University experience in a multi-media landscape to reach prospective students and their influencers online, in print, television, video, display material and e-communications.

“There’s a whole lot of team effort that goes into a multi-media marketing effort of this magnitude and quality. Everyone in the Marketing & Communications Recruitment & Admissions portfolio made an effort to ensure that students seeing our messages would understand just how special the experience really is here at Trent,” said Marilyn Burns, executive director of Marketing & Communications, Recruitment & Admissions at Trent University. “Special thanks to our external partners Sovereign State and Ron Christie Media who were integral to this result.”

Judges in the Multi-Media category praised Trent’s campaign for its use of visual elements, its wide digital reach and impressive results.

The two CCAE Prix d ’Excellence Awards come on the heels of another national win for Trent University. Earlier this month, Trent was celebrated as one of the inaugural winners of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Award of Excellence, which recognizes the communications efforts of post-secondary institutions in promoting the benefits and impacts of social sciences and humanities research. Trent’s Marketing & Communications team won the award in the medium-size institutions campaign for the #TrentHumanities campaign, which compiled stories, student, alumni and research profiles, video testimonials, sector facts, news releases and other highlights and gave them new life through a week-long social media campaign – reaching tens of thousands of people and sharing the importance of studying the humanities, and specifically the benefits of studying the humanities at Trent.