Do you want to help put together the record of a year at Penn? We are a multifaceted student organization that is looking for members with many types of skills to join our team!

Our story began when the Class of 1865 produced the first published undergraduate yearbooks at Penn all those years ago, and we have been building upon this legacy ever since. We are the student organization that creates and sells the official undergraduate Penn yearbook for graduating seniors every year — dedicated to putting together the ultimate record of the Penn undergraduate experience.

Our team is currently a small, tight-knit student club with a culture of inclusivity: every member matters very much and is given a lot of space to contribute to the group and the book we create. Our staff members tend to be holistic and well-rounded rather than siloed into rigid segments, as in everyone is welcomed and encouraged to help brainstorm ideas, run events, build pages, create content, take photos, etc. Please note that there is room to mold your position to lean towards the areas you are most excited to work on and to take up more responsibility/leadership in those areas, particularly as a general staffer — we really welcome the unique energy and ideas that you can bring to the table. For instance, we can discuss a set up where you can work more closely with a certain executive chair. These specialized executive chair positions work alongside the Editor-in-Chief(s): Communications, Business, Content, and Design chairs. We are also open to developing the organizational structure as our club develops, perhaps by adding future leadership opportunities like co- or assistant chairs, specialized staff, and so on. 

• Our Communications chair manages the communications channels of the yearbook team (our email, social media accounts, and this website) and is responsible for responding to and sending out public-facing email communications. The chair also handles the logistics of receiving and organizing submitted content, creates regular informational social media content, loops the relevant parties into different communication threads, and solves customer service issues as our public relations representative.
• Our Business chair leads the team’s strategic+tactical marketing and branding of the yearbook and acts as the team’s financial/budgetary point person. The chair also plans internal social events as well as public-facing marketing events, manages and fulfills sales of the yearbook and past editions of the yearbook, coordinates financial matters with the relevant administrative offices and service-providers, and solves finance-related customer service issues.
• Our Content chair leads the team’s content creation. The chair brainstorms how to solicit/create interesting modular content to include in our book (such as quotes, interviews, photos, etc.), makes the Content Guide, creates public-facing content submission forms, and figures out to whom we should distribute those forms. The chair also creates the book ladder, monitors the number of photos for different yearbook sections, directs the team in taking necessary photos, communicates our photographic needs to our professional photographers, and uploads photos to our publishing software.
• Our Design chair works with the team to develop the visual themes and design motifs for our yearbook as well as to create and enforces a style guide for written content and graphics. The chair serves as the design point person for the team. The chair also drafts the various templates for our layouts, and works with our publisher to select the raw materials for the yearbook and to design the cover.
• Our Editor-in-Chief manages the team and fosters the team culture, creates and enforces the annual schedule for designing yearbook pages, assigns pages to all members for editing and populating with content, monitors the yearbook’s progress towards completion, exacts executive decisions on all matters, recruits and mentors team members, sets the agenda for weekly meetings and runs those meetings, meets with administrators and service-providers on a regular basis, and motivates staff to produce excellent work. 

Every year we create a yearbook for the graduating class at Penn, which also means we have a shifted production cycle to include photos from commencement and such, so we usually finish up in the summer. We use Herff Jones as our publishing company, their software eDesign to create our book. 

Time commitment generally consists of an hour-long weekly meeting (and smaller additional meetings outside of that on a case-by-case basis) and ~1-2 hr of tasks outside of that.

Being on The Record's Staff is both challenging and rewarding, especially given this year's special Penn circumstances. We are looking for future staffers that are accountable and inspired, people who are passionate and energetic and have vision. They are up to the task to take us places, to champion us and prioritize us and be our advocate, to contribute and cultivate the team and the project into what they want the yearbook to be. They are creative, capable, organized, a good communicator, a team player. They are good with time management, are willing to commit the time and energy, and are eager to improve and learn. If you think you have what it takes, we would be so happy to have you!

We are constantly trying to improve the yearbook and how we do things in general in so many ways, so we really welcome new energy! We’re hoping to onboard new team members to fill with driven, competent individuals. Anyone who joins will be able to feel like an empowered team member with a lot of space to influence the creation and execution of an ambitious project in a welcoming environment!

If you would like to be a part of the yearbook on any of these teams, please reach out to us by email at therecordyearbook@gmail.com and cc mikaylac@sas.upenn.edu. We welcome all grade levels.