The 2017-18 academic year was officially the last for Colorado Mesa University’s Media Relations Director Dana Nunn, who is retiring at the end of August. Her replacement, David Ludlam, started on Aug. 1 in order to make the transition smoother with a month of overlap between the two Public Relations people.

“It’s been a lot of transition, she’s just been spending a lot of time with me, kind of walking me through historical knowledge she’s acquired over the last few decades,” Ludlam said.

According to both Nunn and Ludlam, even though they’re both here together during August, Ludlam has taken the full range of responsibilities in his new position, as Nunn has shared her knowledge on subjects as they’ve come up.

Ludlam lived in Palisade and has a family history with CMU. “My wife’s grandfather played football here, her parents went here, and then my parents went here, and then my wife and I met here,” Ludlam said, “Each of us have multiple generations of alumni on each side.”

Ludlam has experience as a public relations person from when he worked for the energy center. The first issue that came up as soon as he started working for CMU was the diploma typo that had been on diplomas since 2012, reading “Coard of Trustees.”

“That was a good week to cut my teeth on,” Ludlam said. It was an issue that had arisen and died down quickly, according to Ludlam, as CMU President Tim Foster started the Diploma Replacement Program to replace the diplomas containing the error.

“I’ve got to say, this is part of why I love working here,” Nunn said, “When we screw up, and I don’t think we screw up a lot, but inevitably we’re going to, Tim Foster always owns his own stuff, he takes responsibility for it, he apologizes, and he attempts to make sure it never happens again. That’s as good as it gets for a P.R. person.”

As August ends, Nunn will leave CMU and instead, the name “David Ludlam” will show up on the number of campus public service announcements that each student gets in their school emails.