IC News

Every year, strategic communications students in strategic communications professor Arhlene Flowers’ capstone Public Relations Lab course take on real-world clients and spend the semester operating like a PR agency — planning campaigns, generating media attention, creating deliverables, and researching audiences.  

This past July, students from Flowers’ fall 2020 section had that hard work recognized when they received a PRism Student Award from the Public Relations Society of America's Rochester chapter for their work planning a campaign surrounding the Community Foundation of Tompkins County’s Social Justice Fund.  

PRism awards are given annually and recognize PR students and practitioners who create campaigns that meet the “highest standards of performance in public relations.” 

Led by Bianca Summerville ‘21, the objective of the campaign was to draw more attention and donations to the fund, which was established in the wake of the Summer 2020 protests for racial justice.  

“The Community Foundation was looking to empower people to go beyond words and convert that into actions and money to support these communities that were getting a lot of attention, but not necessarily the kinds of support that they needed,” Summerville said. 

The team, which also included Kara Bowen ‘20, Julia Nomberg ‘21, and Elinor Zollweg ‘20, had a unique challenge in their way when creating the campaign — the course was conducted entirely online, and the students were each in their hometowns.  

Over the course of the semester, the campaign evolved to include three main parts. One was centered around educating individuals about social justice. The team proposed partnering with local individuals and institutions to create discussion guides to use when talking to different audiences about certain topics, for example: “How Do You Talk to Kids about Social Justice?” 

Another element of the campaign was creating an advocacy guide of talking points to use when encountering a person who is resistant to social justice movements. Lastly, the team also proposed that the Community Foundation establish a committee and award surrounding the Social Justice Fund to recognize civil rights advocates in the local community.  

"I am so proud of my PR Lab students for being honored with the PRSA PRism award. Bianca Summerville was the perfect student to spearhead the Social Justice Fund plan, with her strong background representing nonprofits in Central New York,” said Flowers. “I also want to thank Nancy Massicci, chief development officer of the Community Foundation of Tompkins County, for being a supportive and responsive client who met regularly with the students on Zoom.” 

While creating a campaign took a lot of time and work, Summerville says she didn’t mind.  

“I would sit down at 5 p.m. and tell myself ‘I’m going to work on this project until 8,’ but then I’d look up and all of a sudden it's 2 a.m.,” she said. “It’s the type of work where you get so immersed in it and don’t even feel the time passing. That always makes things so much easier and it's so much more fun.”