Students Apply Their PR Skills

Holly Grunn, Junior

When looking back on the winter 2009 semester, most EMU students recall hand cramps, headaches and late nights from their rigorous course loads. The average student spent hours upon hours taking notes and studying for exams in order to get that oh-so rewarding A. However, contrary to having final exams and papers to write, the JRNL 408 course, partnered with Academic Service-Learning, proved to be the ultimate test for soon-to-be grads of the PR program. 

The PR students of the winter 2009 JRNL 408-Case Studies in Public Relations course got their feet wet in the work of PR instead of just learning about it in class.  The course is a capstone to the PR program and its goal is not to teach students new concepts, but to allow them to apply the concepts they have already learned to real life clients through Academic Service-Learning (AS-L).  

The Winter JRNL 408 class, taught by Lolita Cummings-Carson, APR, had nine AS-L projects where students had the chance to work alone or with a partner providing public relations services to a non-profit organization of their choice. The projects ranged from work within the university such as a visibility campaign for the English department to work outside the university by helping organize and plan events such as an annual ballet competition for the dance studio, Dance Americana. 

Ashley Boelens, senior, is very pleased that she actually got to take what she had learned and apply it to a real client before graduating. 

“The writing skills I learned over the years definitely helped with writing press releases, news releases and helped in creating media kits for my AS-L project,” said Boelens.  “It was a wonderful opportunity to take our course work to the next level by actually using what we know to make things happen.” 

Along with their individual AS-L projects, the class had a large scale project to create a proposal for residence hall safety programs.  After extensive work inside and outside the classroom, a proposal was created by a sub-committee of the class compiling all ideas and research the students had come up with. The committee then had the opportunity to present their proposal to President Susan Martin, EMU Chief of Police, Greg O’Dell, Interim Vice President for Student Affairs, Bernice Lindke and many other administrators. 

Marc Aust, senior, was one of the students who presented on behalf of the class to the administration and was pleased to have had the opportunity.   

“Presenting our research and proposal to the people at the university who have power to make a difference shows that the university takes students input seriously,” Aust explained. “It shows that our professors have the commitment to connect the classroom instruction with real world education.” 

With this “real world education” students have gained from the JRNL 408 class, they can utilize the knowledge gained by the experience of their Academic Service-Learning to be fully equipped in all of their endeavors in the field of public relations.