Pomp and Circumstances - Division of Inclusion, Diversity & Equity

People gather in The Shack of the MU Student Center to watch George Smith accept the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Sam O'Keefe/University of Missouri — Mark Boyd takes pictures for social media of people gathering in The Shack in the MU Student Center to watch George Smith accept the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. After graduating, Boyd will be Mizzou’s social media manager. Photo by Sam O’Keefe.

Story by Erik Potter

Mark Boyd was trying to figure out where he fit as a computer science major. He was doing well in his classes, but he knew he didn’t want to earn a living sitting at a computer and coding all day.

He was still unsure what he wanted his career to look like when he took a student job in June 2016 as a digital marketing assistant in what is now the Student Affairs Marketing and Communication office.

Boyd started out working with student clubs and organizations to get their events listed on the division’s online calendar.

“I realized I liked talking to people and liked PR and strategy,” says Boyd, from St. Louis.

He learned as much as he could in the new job — how to write copy, how to optimize copy for each social media platform, and how to read and present social analytics to clients.

By spring 2017, he switched his major to interdisciplinary studies, where he kept his emphasis in computer science and added an emphasis in communication.

He knew he’d made the right decision when he came back that fall and started doing more social media marketing. Many of the messages he was writing were aimed at freshmen, so he purposely struck up conversations with freshmen around campus to find out what they were nervous about and what they wanted to know.

“Their needs are always changing, so being able to go out and find that information is valuable,” he says.

After he graduates this weekend, Boyd will start a full-time job at Mizzou as social media manager in the Joint Office of Strategic Communication.