When UC Riverside medical student Jonathan Ogbogu recently received a $10,000 external scholarship, the UCR School of Medicine featured the story on the SOM News website and shared the announcement on social media. “It was one of the most liked stories I've ever seen on our social media,” said Ross French, associate director of communications on the UCR SOM Strategic Initiatives team, who published both the news article and the Facebook post. “I didn't get him the award, I just got to tell people about it, and he got all these accolades,” French continued. “If my team didn't do that, no one would have told that story.”

This experience summarizes much of French’s role as leader of the SOM communications unit that focuses on sharing the SOM’s story with the world. “Media in the 21st century barely exists; no one else is telling our stories,” he said. “So it's up to us to tell those stories, to be able to go out there and explain somebody's research and try to put it in a way that laypeople understand.”

French joined the School of Medicine in 2014, a year after its opening, after spending 14 years at UCR working in Intercollegiate Athletics and then as a web content developer and public information officer with University Relations. With his years of experience at the SOM and at UCR as a whole, French reflected on the SOM’s importance for the medically underserved community. “I think the School of Medicine is critical because the mission of this medical school is to improve the region in which we live,” he said. “Working at the School of Medicine was a chance to work at something that I thought really mattered and really made a difference.”

He sees that difference every year with each new graduating physician. “There's a particular pride in seeing these young people cross the stage, in seeing them come back as doctors,” French said. “I take pride in being part of the team and looking and seeing how we are growing, expanding, and supporting the mission of the school.”

Communications and creating new doctors

French’s communications role includes writing news stories and social media posts, assisting and coordinating photography and videography, and assisting with media relations, which involves providing media training for SOM faculty and connecting appropriate faculty sources with enquiring reporters. He also enjoys contributing to SI team tasks like event planning. “Every day is different and it's one of the things I love about the job,” he said.

In addition, French manages all 56 of the SOM’s websites - undergraduate medical education, graduate medical education, individual program pages, and more - which he originally helped build in 2014. He maintains the accuracy of website content, adds new sites as needed, and keeps up with requirements such as ensuring accessibility across webpages.

The role requires attention to both quality content and user experience. “You can have a programmer and terrible content and therefore a terrible website, or you can have great content and a terrible website that doesn't work well,” French said. “You've got to get everything working in balance.”

“I will never save a life, I will never bring a child into the world, I will never do anything medical that will make a huge difference in this community--but what I can do is hopefully make it so that a young person can more easily find the information they need to get into medicine,” French added. “It’s sharing the message of what's going on here through quality writing and storytelling, and making a difference in that way.”

Communications as a team

French oversees the small communications unit within the SI team, consisting of Wendy Fierro, a senior graphic artist, and Erika Klein, a writer and content editor.  “Often times people don't realize the amount of time and effort that goes into crafting a good story, to creating a graphic design piece or graphic element, or adding stuff to a website,” he said. “We have incredibly talented people who can do all those things.”

Fierro joined the SOM in 2024 from Auxiliary Design Services at UCR. “Wendy is an outstanding designer who has brought some really cool, fresh ideas,” French said of her work. “Having the quality in terms of your graphic design, making sure that it looks good so that your brain doesn't stumble over anything, makes a huge difference.”

Fierro creates visuals for events and school programs as well as invitations, digital graphics, directional signage, t-shirts, and more, both for SI-related projects and for other SOM departments. “My job is to make sure that we deliver the communications to the right audience in the best way possible for visuals, for not just students but the public,” she explained. Fierro also works closely with vendors to ensure they receive the correct files for products like event programs and that they’re printed correctly and delivered on time. “I like to see things in person, especially in print, so I'm the first one to review and make sure that everything looks right,” she said.

The payoff is seeing her work in students’ and families’ hands. “I remember going into my first commencement and seeing all the students holding the programs and the parents saving them,” Fierro recalled. “I was proud of that moment, just to know that I helped to make that experience memorable for them.”

Fierro also designs and lays out the SOM’s annual Year in Review with written content from French and Klein. The publication features highlights from the year portrayed in articles, photos, and graphics. “It’s special because it brings all the stories from the year together to show the SOM’s growth and community impact over the past months and how we’re working toward the mission,” Klein said.

Klein joined the SOM in 2022 from a role in communications at a nonprofit. A lifelong Southern Californian, she was excited to use her background in health journalism to further the SOM’s mission to improve healthcare in the region. “Finding the right person to come in who understood medicine and understood research and could articulate it in a way that laypeople can understand and be interested in was tough,” French said.

Interviewing people at all levels of the school regularly demonstrates to Klein the broad commitment to the mission–and allows her to share it through profiles, event coverage, research pieces, and more. Published on the SOM News website and social media, these articles provide one of the only opportunities to share lesser known, but no less important stories at the SOM. Klein’s articles also help inform journalists about the school, sometimes leading to external media coverage. Her work supplements the research-focused campus coverage of the SOM by Iqbal Pittalwala, a senior public information officer in University Relations.

Communications at a broader level

With the value of graphic design and writing sometimes in question when artificial intelligence can now create content in seconds, French emphasized the continued need for human creators. “When AI is used for certain kinds of writing, it cheapens the product,” he said, citing storytelling as an example. “If we're expecting a human being to spend the time to pay attention to something, we have the responsibility of doing it correctly and doing it in a way that respects the reader or viewer.”

In addition to his other responsibilities, French serves on a committee focused on clarifying AI use at the SOM and at UCR as a whole. “As a medical school for the community, by the community… we owe it to them to do it correctly,” he said.

Beyond AI, French is dedicated to ensuring that staff work is valued. He served as president of Staff Assembly from 2018 to 2019 and remains involved with the organization. “Staff are often overlooked, not intentionally, but because people don't realize the work that we're doing,” he said. “I always advocate for staff and I always will try to put staff, if not first, at least towards the top, and make sure that we're not forgotten.”

French enjoys mentoring both students and staff members who are earlier in their careers. “It's a way that I can make a difference,” he said. “I can feel like I am helping the place in which I have chosen to live.”

Regardless of the task at hand, French frequently demonstrates his commitment to improving the SOM on his own and with the SI team. “Our job is to make sure that during the time we're here, we do the best we can: We tell our stories, we build our brand, we do all these things to better the school, the university, and the people,” he said. “I take pride in saying that we did some good things today, and that the work that we do matters.”

Photo credit: Amanda Bell, UCR School of Medicine