URI PRSSA organizes conference alone
The URI Public Relations Student Society of America will soon host the first district conference in its history this month. Photo contributed by Siobhan Richards.
The University of Rhode Island Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) is hosting its first-ever district conference on March 12 and 13.
The conference, titled “Next Gen – Smashing PRecedents,” hopes to prepare the next generation of public relations professionals for the new, rapidly changing industry.
“With everything going on in the world– COVID, social justice issues, political instability– public relations departments are becoming more valuable to companies,” junior Siobhan Richards, president of PRSSA, said. “We decided this was a perfect time to host a conference specifically for this generation because the industry is seeing such rapid changes.”
The event will include speakers from many PR-related fields, such as journalism, sports media, business and social media. According to Richards, they did this to make the information presented relevant to more majors and students.
Richards said that the schools that host the district conference are typically large schools with large PRSSA chapters.
“URI never really had the opportunity or facility or a big enough chapter to host one,” Richards said. “We found out over the summer that all conferences would be virtual, and I had the idea to plan a pitch to see if we could host it for the upcoming year.”
From there, an extensive interview process began that took over three months, according to Richards. It wasn’t until January that URI PRSSA was approved to host the event. Steve Zenofsky, the professional advisor for URI PRSSA, said that he is very impressed with the work that the executive board has done to make this event possible.
“For any PRSSA chapter to want to take on a district conference is very ambitious and is a major undertaking,” Zenofsky said. “It provides a lot of value to a lot of students beyond just the University of Rhode Island.”
Richards described the URI PRSSA as “underdogs” in this process since it is the University’s first time hosting such a large-scale event. Additionally, URI’s chapter is significantly smaller than others in the Northeast district. Richards said that the chapter’s size and planning it with the other executive board members made it rewarding.
“Cat Kalogeros, who is the Director of Events of PRSSA, and I have been up to our eyeballs in emails, sending about 50 to 70 emails a day,” Richards said. “There are many different moving parts, and it’s been mostly an all-student effort.”
URI PRSSA was established in Feb. 2014, according to Zenofsky, which makes them a relatively young chapter compared to others in the district. It is one of more than 300 chapters in colleges throughout the country.
Richards said one of the biggest challenges of planning the event with little professional help has been balancing the planning with classwork. She and Kalogeros have spent more time working on this conference than they have in all of their classes combined, according to Richards.
URI’s PRSSA has made all the graphics and flyers themselves as well. Richards said that the conference schedule and the people they have reached out to are solely based on connections.
Nonetheless, she said that she is proud of the chapter as it prepares to host the event.
“We’ve gone through a lot in the past year, with the pandemic and everything,” Richards said. “I think that our ability to not put things on pause and put on something this large scale and to do it well is impressive for our chapter. It’s been a lot of work to do, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.”