MARIA GRENINGER
Assistant Director

In August of 1990, Maria was hired as an editorial associate to launch Indiana State University’s official faculty/staff newspaper -- Update (now Campus Connection). At that time, the newspaper was distributed every other week during the calendar year. Now, the feature publication is published once a month throughout the academic year.

In 1991, as a result of the transfer of Sandy Cline to the office of Alumni Affairs, Greninger moved to University News Service (later known as Public Information and now, Public Affairs) as an assistant director of internal and external media relations efforts. She continued to serve as assistant director of Public Affairs and as editor of the newspaper for the next 10 years.

In one of her primary beat areas -- the sciences -- she and director of Public Affairs, Teresa Exline, and IU’s Ellen Gullett received an award of distinction in 1998 for medical education public affairs from the Association of American Medical Colleges for the launching of the BA/MD program -- a joint initiative to help solve the shortage of rural physicians.

After 11 years as editor of Campus Connection -- Greninger will be focusing her efforts in the area of "new media" or web development. Beginning this fall (2001), she will coordinate all of the office of Public Affairs' web site activities, including maintenance of the university’s web calendar, the Public Affairs Experts Guide, the News Archive and the web-based news and events forms, as well as maintenance of the ISU home page and other top-level university pages.

In addition to her existing responsibilities, Greninger will be coordinating content for the MyISU portal (which went live in August of 2001) and will be spearheading efforts to create a comprehensive and searchable photo database and searchable news archive for Public Affairs. Other future initiatives include a site to link university arts entities to the downtown Arts Corridor Project, a Speakers Bureau web site in conjunction with Leadership Terre Haute and the creation of sites for both University Development and the ISU Foundation.  

Greninger earned her bachelor’s degree in English writing from Saint Mary’s College, South Bend, in 1989. During college, she worked independently to harness internships in public relations at both St. Joseph’s Hospital and at the South Bend/Mishawaka Area Chamber of Commerce.

Prior to starting work at ISU, she worked as a freelance writer for the public relations office at St. Mary-of-the-Woods College and in the news department for Casey, Ill., radio station WCBH (104.3 FM).

From 1989 to 1990, she worked full-time as a general assignment reporter and sports editor for the Brazil Times (Brazil, Ind.), where she met her husband, Howard, now a business reporter for the Terre Haute Tribune-Star.

They have three children:  Doug (8), Gina (5) and Emma (3), and reside in Terre Haute.

FAX:
(812) 237-8157

E-MAIL:
m-greninger@indstate.edu

MAILING ADDRESS:
Office of Public Affairs
104 Gillum Hall
217 N. Sixth St.
Terre Haute, Ind.  47809

PRIMARY BEAT AREAS:

Alumni Affairs
Admissions
Sciences (COAS)
School of Health
& Human Performance
School of Nursing
Terre Haute Center for
Medical Education
University Development

OTHER DUTIES:

Responsible for web
design and maintenance
of all Public Affairs and
several top-level ISU pages

Consults and critiques
other university-related
web sites on design
and content quality

CAMPUS & COMMUNITY
INVOLVEMENT:

Wabash Valley Cancer Care
Web Development 
Committee

University Speakers Series

Leadership Terre Haute
Class XV

Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) - District V

St. Joseph's University Parish
(various committees)