Gayle Arries receives Tri-County’s Presidential Medallion for staff excellence

Gayle Arries, director of marketing at Tri-County Technical College, was honored August 15 with the highest award given for staff excellence at the College.   

President Ronnie L. Booth presented Mrs. Arries with the Presidential Medallion for Staff Excellence at the College’s fall convocation. The medallion, along with a cash award made possible by the Tri-County Technical College Foundation, goes to a person who best exemplifies the College philosophy and has contributed the most during the academic year to the development of the College and its students.                   

Mrs. Arries joined the College’s public relations and marketing team in 2005.  As director of marketing, she manages the College’s advertising, marketing and graphics projects.

“Gayle brings passion and vision to her work every day and is committed to transforming lives through the College’s educational programs, one student at a time.  Gayle is creative and fosters the ability for those around her to develop new ideas, test those ideas and bring those ideas to fruition,” said Linda Jameison, assistant vice president for student support and engagement, in her nomination letter.

“Her work over the last two years with colleagues to connect with prospective, past and returning students is an example of her expertise.  Her ability to bring people to consensus resulted in creating a marketing and advertising campaign that generated excitement about possibilities our students can realize.  It is an example that her work isn’t just about the tag line or the visual, it’s about the people who can be inspired by the message,” said Jameison.

Over the years Mrs. Arries has worked with groups all over campus to assess and streamline the College’s recruitment and enrollment communications and processes.  In 2013, she chaired the Communication and Tools for Students Success team, a group comprised of eight persons representing all areas of the College who were involved with the matriculation process.  The charter group worked to streamline the enrollment process.

Later that year she was selected to be a presenter at the Community College Enrollment Management and Student Marketing Symposium in Raleigh, North Carolina.  She spoke about the matriculation improvement project in a presentation titled “Marketing and Enrollment Management: Essential Collaboration.”

In 2015 she, along with Koolflix partners Clark Smith and Tim Angevine, were co-presenters at the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations (NCMPR) annual conference in Portland, Oregon. Their presentation was titled “Student Engagement through Marketing and Multi Media.”  

In 2007, she and her team received a Gold Paragon award from NCMPR for the invitation created for the College’s Anderson Campus premier event for major donors.

In 2014 Mrs. Arries was selected as one of two Tri-County staff members to attend the S.C. Technical College Leadership Academy.  During the year-long leadership development program, she focused on a project titled “4-C-Able Futures,” a week-long summer camp for high school youth in foster care. This year the 4-C-Able Futures camp was held June 12-17 on the Easley Campus and at Southern Wesleyan University.  Its primary focus is to develop career and personal goals, confidence and self-esteem for this group of high-risk students.

Prior to joining Tri-County, from 1992-2005, she served as writer, editor and, later, vice president of marketing for Cox CustomMedia, a publishing company within the Cox Enterprises family (whose operations include broadcast television stations, radio stations and several daily newspapers, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution).  She holds a B.A. in English education and writing and a master’s in organizational change and leadership, both from Columbia College.