PRestige Fall 2015

1.PRSSA NATIONAL CONFERENCEThis fall, I had the opportunity to attend the PRSSA National Conference in Atlanta. The conference ran from Nov. 6-10. Throughout my time at conference, I had the opportunity to network with other public relations professionals and students. There were a variety of development sessions throughout the conference with a variety of topics from corporate communications, crisis communication and social media in the health care field.

ONU PRSSA was recognized with another Star Chapter Award. We have received this award since the awards inception in 2009 and are one of two schools able to say this. All PRSSA chapters are able eli-gible for the Star Chapter Award; they just need to complete eight of the 10 chapter and professional development goals.

This year, five graduates from the 2015 class received the National Gold Key award, which acknowl-edges outstanding PRSSA members. These individuals were Anna Hoard, Katee Johnson, Brittany Holland, Alexandra Rese and Kelsi Rupersberg. This award recognizes students who display academic excellence in public relations and leadership. The National Gold Key award is the highest individual honor PRSSA member are eligible to receive. In the past eight years our chapter has had a total of twenty of 28 members receive this award.

ONU alumnus Kevin Saghy, the manager of communications for the Chicago Cubs, was the moderator for the keynote address, “Meet the Living Legends of Public Rela-tions,” with living legends Patrick Ford and Ellen East. Along with ONU alumna Dr. Alisa Agozzino presented an intriguing session on “The ‘Realization’ of Health Care: Using Social to Reach Those Gone Digital.”

The PRSSA 2016 National Conference will be held in Indianapolis, Ind. I am looking forward to exploring another big city with other PRSSA members next year. My first experience at National Conference was an experience I won’t forget, and I can’t wait to make even more memories next year.

by Tiffany Kline

2.ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

Renee LeGendre is a 2011 graduate of ONU and currently is a Senior Account Executive at Fahlgren Mortine in Columbus, Ohio. LeGendre effectively leads her teams to drive brands to their highest potential in non-profit, consumer and business-to-business.

Still active within the Society, LeGendre is a member of the Central Ohio Chap-ter of PRSA. LeGendre’s love for the ONU PRSSA chapter budded even before her college career started. It began when she was quickly engulfed in Dr. Stephan Iseman’s wisdom and charm during a college visit.

Becoming actively involved in PRSSA while in school, LeGendre served as the chapter president during her senior year. She commented on how she loves see-ing this same passion for public relations and PRSSA in students who she meets through her interactions with current students.

LeGendre lives by the motto “surround yourself with people who inspire and challenge you every day” and encourages others to do the same.

She has been an ONU PRSSA mentor for multiple years and loves taking part in the alumni events our Chapter hosts. One piece of advice she would share with the students of our Chapter is “soak up every single opportunity you have in front of you in the PR program.”

LeGendre is an amazing mentor, and our members are proud to have the op-portunity to learn from her. Thank you, Renee for being such an amazing public relations professional and alumna!

by Blake Lundy

3.KIND CAMPAIGNKIND Healthy Snacks are a natural foods company based in New York City. Introduced in 2004 by Daniel Lubetzky, KIND manufactures six different product lines made from only whole natural ingredients, which buys into the brand philosophy that there’s healthy, and there’s tasty, and then there is healthy and tasty. This love for healthy and tasty snacks eventually led to what the company calls its “Kind Movement,” a mission to simply spread and celebrate kindness, small or big neigh-bor or stranger, be kind to yourself and be kind to others. This fall KIND Healthy Snacks partnered with the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) to help spread awareness for healthy snacks on college campuses across the country. Specifically, KIND’s “No Promises” national campaign for KIND Snacks challenged teams to bring to life KIND’s “AND philosophy” by life-hacking their college campuses. Northern’s team of five built awareness among students at the University that KIND Snacks are the perfect snack for both health and taste. Our “KIND Bears” team at Ohio Northern consisted of Evan Bader, Megan Cottongim, Elena Coleman, Alexa Lammers and Blake Lundy. The team worked tirelessly throughout the fall semester helping to raise awareness of KIND Snacks. The team handed out free samples all across campus, including in front of the chapel and library, in the McIntosh Center, and in the King Horn athletic complex. The team also met with several sports teams on campus, including football, volleyball, and men’s and women’s cross country teams. The different outreach opportunities, coupled with a strong social media presence, allowed our KIND Bears to reach maximum engagement. The goal of the semester campaign was to not only raise awareness for KIND Healthy Snacks, but also increase campus awareness of healthier snack options as a whole. Sometimes as a student or an athlete, finding time to grab a meal is difficult, so raising awareness on quick healthy snack options was beneficial to us here at Ohio Northern. Ohio Northern University’s team garnered second place in front of Ohio University and behind the University of Alabama. For the efforts of the team, KIND Bears received $500 for the chapter, a case of KIND Snacks and $5,000 donation to the charity of the team’s choosing.

by Evan Bader

KIND BEARS“life-hacking” Ohio Northern

4.SPEAKER SPOTLIGHTThis fall, Heather Hoffman from the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library visited our PRSSA section to talk about social media etiquette and how to represent yourself online. Hoffman brought knowledge, humor and fun to our group with ease. She masterfully explained how to represent ourselves online by critiquing our own social me-dia accounts. Hoffman took the time to sift through our Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram profiles to point out what posts and pictures were positive representations of ourselves. On the flip side, she also pointed out how some visuals and content we chose to post didn’t portray the best first impression. Hoffman’s presentation that night increased everyone’s knowledge of how employers use social media to create first impressions of potential hires, as well as how to put our best face forward. Our knowledge of social media and our online footprint will never be the same. We would like to thank Hoffman for her time! We hope to see her again in PAC 133. 5.

DONOR THANK YOU

THAN

K YOU

To our generous alumni and friends,

Despite the size of our chapter, our members are always striving to achieve bigger and better things. We know national and regional PRSSA events are attainable through focused fundraising efforts throughout the year, but sometimes these efforts are not enough. When more than one member is interested in attending these events, the money in our budget does not stretch as much as we would hope. In these cases, we have our extremely generous alumni and friends who extend their helping hand. Throughout the years, our chapter has been utterly amazed at the extreme contributions provided in support of our continued involvement on national and regional levels. Our members cannot thank you enough for your generosity and unremitting commitment to the Ohio North-ern University PRSSA Chapter. We are immensely grateful for your contributions and support. Thank you for helping us progress and thrive!

With sincere thanks,Hannah Peterson, ONU PRSSA Chapter President

by Haley Grigsby