Bridge FAQs
The Basics
The Bridge is the internal campus hub for the Carthage community. It’s your center for campus news and announcements.
The Bridge includes more stories, events, and links to campus resources than the external Carthage College homepage, which is intended for prospective students and first-time visitors to Carthage.edu. There’s so much great stuff going on at Carthage. The Bridge collects all this great news in one easy-to-browse website.
The Bridge email roundup is sent by email to all Carthage faculty, staff, and current students. The Bridge email roundup is sent every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during the school year. During the summer months, we may only send The Bridge email once per week, on Wednesdays, depending on campus news. The Bridge email roundup is not sent during Thanksgiving, Christmas, or Spring breaks.
Submitting to The Bridge
Any member of the Carthage community can submit stories to The Bridge. Just go to 1235.mblayst.com/bridge/submit and select whether you want to submit a news story or event. You’ll need to log in with your Carthage username and password. Then simply complete the form and hit “submit.”
If you are a faculty or staff member, your story or event will be published immediately. If you are a student, your story or event will be published after it is approved by a moderator in the Office of Marketing & Communications.
News stories are published to The Bridge website, and appear in the section you select as the story’s category (i.e. Arts, News for Students, News for Faculty & Staff, etc.). News stories are also included in The Bridge email roundups.
Activities people can attend should be submitted as an event. Events are published to the main Carthage calendar. The next 10 upcoming campus events are listed toward the bottom of The Bridge email.
We encourage people to submit activities as both stories and events.
Yes. All stories published to The Bridge will include your name. If you want your submission to remain anonymous, please send an email to bridge@mblayst.com.
The Bridge is a community-based system, meaning that submitters are the ones ultimately responsible for the accuracy of the information they post. The Bridge moderators ensure that the content of Bridge stories adheres to College policies, and we may edit your submission for style, clarification, or publication elsewhere on the Carthage website.
The email roundup automatically includes all stories posted since the last roundup. The Bridge email will go out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (and possibly just on Wednesdays during the summer months). If you would like your story to be part of a specific roundup, you must submit it before that day.
Yes, we encourage all Carthage offices and departments to post about their open positions for students on The Bridge.
Note: All on-campus jobs for students need to be posted on Handshake before they can be promoted in The Bridge. If you need help posting a position on Handshake, reach out to The Aspire Center at aspire@mblayst.com.
Bridge Tips and Best Practices
It’s best to submit both an event and a news story. Submit an event as soon as you know all of the details, even if your event is months away. That way it will be on the main Carthage calendar for everyone to see. Submit a news story about the upcoming event 2-7 days in advance. This way, your story will be included in The Bridge email closer to the date of your event.
Bridge Top Stories are selected by the Office of Marketing & Communications. Users may request that their story be featured by contacting the Bridge moderators at bridge@mblayst.com. Top Bridge Stories must have a photo; send yours to bridge@mblayst.com. Please note that moderators can receive many requests, and we may not be able to accommodate them all.
Send your image as a .jpg to bridge@mblayst.com, along with a caption and the headline of the article you just submitted. Please be sure to tell us that you have the rights to publish the photo. The Bridge team will add your photo as soon as possible, as long as the photo is appropriate for the website.
No, but you should send this request to the Bridge team at bridge@mblayst.com. Just send us a nice email telling us the headline of your article and the date you would like it to run again. We want the stories in The Bridge to stay fresh, so we won’t be able to accommodate every request. But we do try to republish stories about events once per week until the event, just to remind people that it’s happening.
We totally understand this request, and we love your enthusiasm for promoting your event! But unfortunately, if we did this for every story, the Bridge email would be ridiculously long and ridiculously repetitive. People would stop reading it, and that’s bad for all of us. Our policy is to republish event-related Bridge stories once per week, when appropriate, and we always aim to republish one more time on the day of/day before your event.
Send an email to bridge@mblayst.com. We will make the correction as soon as possible.
Bridge Readership
Easy! To be informed about what’s happening on campus. All you need to do is pop open the Bridge email every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Take a moment to scan the headlines. Click on any that interest you or pertain to you. Scan, click, read, know. It’s that simple.
Yes. People read The Bridge. The Bridge team frequently surveys the campus community. Here are some facts from our most recent Bridge survey:
- 79% of Carthage students read The Bridge email at least once a week.
- 52% of students responded that they always read The Bridge email.
- 43% of freshmen responded that they always read The Bridge email.
- 82% of freshmen read The Bridge email at least once a week.
- 77% of students say The Bridge email is the best way to share campus news with them.
- 69% of faculty/staff members said they always read The Bridge email.
- 90% of faculty/staff read The Bridge email at least once per week.
- 81% of faculty/staff members say The Bridge email is the best way to share campus news with them.
Two More Things …
- Solicitation and advertising of for-profit activities are not appropriate for The Bridge.
- Please do not post stories about items you have for sale, real estate, or rent.
- Notifications about students missing upcoming classes due to athletics, field trips, conferences, or other activities should not be submitted to The Bridge. Sports-related absences will be communicated to a student’s professors directly.
- Any stories that use vulgar language, are nonsensical, or are attacking in any way will be removed.
- Bridge editors use their judgment about what is appropriate and not appropriate for publication on The Bridge.