It is amazing how time flies by when you are busy– and this is the case as a doctoral student in Public Relations. This semester, I am working as a graduate teaching associate, but my assistantship has involved a variety of different activities. I have done research, I have guest lectured for a couple of courses, and be a TA for two introductory level communications courses. But for the most part, my assistantship was about helping out with PR Day. I have blogged on this event a couple of times over the last couple of months.
I started helping out with PR Day in June (well, I basically started right after I got back from presenting in China). My advisor, Dr. Michael Palenchar, was the co-chair of the PR Day committee, and asked me to be on the committee as a graduate assistant. The topic for PR Day 2008 was going to be Crisis Communication, and I was very excited about that. My duties as a graduate assistant was to design the web site, set up online registration, and design the PR Day brochure. The web site was easy to do, but I had to teach my self InDesign. I used PageMaker when I was at Florida for all of my visual communications courses, but I was up for the challenge and it paid off.
Over the summer, the PR Day committee worked on setting up the various workshops and we finalized our guest speakers and key note speaker. For online registration, we used Eventbrite— which was really amazing! They have great customer service representatives and it is really easy to set up and customize an event. I highly recommend them if you are interested in using online registration for your event.
We got the PR Day 2008 web site and online registration running in August, and printed the brochures for PR Day as well (thanks to High Resolutions), and the fall semester was all about finalizing the event, sponsors, and publicize the event. Planning an event such as PR Day takes planning, meetings, working together, and spending lots of time in front of the computer (especially in Frontpage, Photoshop, and InDesign!)
As the semester progressed, PR Day inched closer and closer, and it finally arrived today! I was very excited to hear all of the panelists (Ron Edmond from Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Mary Beth West, Michael Cherenson, Dr. Tim Sellnow and Dr. Rob Ulmer to name a few) and our key note speaker, Barbara Reynolds of the CDC. We had an amazing turnout– a lot of people registered online and everyone was buzzing about it in our college and department. There were a lot of students from Tennessee and other universities along with many professionals in public relations.
As for my duties at PR Day, I definitely was busy :)– but it is all good! I was very excited to be a moderator for one of the breakout sessions. I had the opportunity to introduce Mary Beth West (2008 Senior Counsel for Advocacy to the PRSA National Board) and Principal of Mary Beth West Consulting) and Michael Cherenson (Chair-elect of PRSSA and Executive Vice President of Success Communication Group) for their presentation on the FEMA crisis involving Hurricane Katerina. It was very insightful and a pleasure to meet two distinguished public relations professionals. 🙂
After the two breakout sessions, we adjurned to the ballroom at the University Center at the University of Tennessee. During the luncheon, Dr. Michael Wirth and Gary McCormick addressed the audience and Cathy Ackermann of Ackermann PR (title sponsor for PR Day) introduced Barbara Reynolds as the keynote speaker. Ms. Reynolds was amazing! It was so insightful to get her insights into the issues that are happening in the PR field regarding crisis communication.
We also got another treat as well– Ron Edmond and Barbara Reynolds met for a roundtable session after the luncheon with the PR graduate students, and Michael Cherenson and Mary Beth West met for a roundtable session with undergraduate PR students. Thank you so much to you all for spending the time to talk with us about research ideas and giving us your insights! What a great experience! 🙂 All of the students really appreciated it! 🙂
Overall, it was a very rewarding and great learning experience. It was a great opportunity to help organize an event, network with individuals that are experienced in the field of public relations, and interact with other students and professionals from other universities.
Congratulations to the rest of the PR Day 2008 Committee (Ashley Ogan, Tom Looney, Becky Huckaby, Ellen Liston, Susan Lauver, Kassie Baker, and Lindsey Haas). Thank you to my fellow graduate students and friends for helping out and being so supportive (Angela, Sabrina, Tulika, Hannah, Bernardo, Tatjana, Kenon, and Steve) and the CCI faculty at UT (Dean Wirth, Dr. McMillan, Dr. Avery, Dr. White, Dr. Taylor, Dr. Morrison, and Dr. Fall). Last but not least, I would like to thank Dr. Palenchar– he’s been a great advisor and thank you for the great opportunity to be part of the PR Day Committee.
So basically, to sum it all up– PR Day 2008 was a huge success! 🙂 Hope all is going well and have a great day! 🙂
Best Wishes,
Karen
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