The Adviser

January 2014

• Media & Communication Graduate Finds Success with FleishmanHillard
• Faculty Profile: Bill Dean, Ed.D.
• The Hub@TTU
• Get to Know Your Ambassador: Maria Vice
• Major Spotlight: Public Relations
• The College of Media & Communication Announces New App

Media & Communication Graduate Finds Success with FleishmanHillard
By Lauren Glover, photos courtesy Caroline Trujillo

College of Media & Communication alumna Caroline Trujillo, from Bedford, Texas, has found success after graduating a year ago with a bachelor's degree in public relations.

Trujillo began working as an intern at FleishmanHillard in Dallas in January following her December 2012 graduation.

"This was my first agency experience," Trujillo said. "I was really excited to see what it was going to be about, and after a few months of interning, I found out I loved it."

At the end of her internship, Trujillo was offered an extension as an Alfred Fleishman Diversity Fellow. A few weeks later, Trujillo had a full-time offer from the Texas offices and has been working full-time for FleishmanHillard since July.

Trujillo works with two main clients - Texas Oncology and General Motors.

"With General Motors, I help with the communications department, and I develop a lot of influencer strategies, like finding bloggers and influencers," Trujillo said.

Trujillo said Department of Public Relations Chairperson Trent Seltzer, Ph.D., helped her develop as a student and a professional while she was still at Texas Tech. Trujillo met Seltzer while she was vice president and then president of member services for Tech PR.

"He was our adviser for Tech PR, so I was able to develop a relationship with him," Trujillo said. "He always gave me advice, and from his experience in the agency world, he was able to teach me the ropes of public relations in general, whenever I had a question."

Seltzer said Trujillo's motivation and curiosity impressed him.

"She wasn't here to get a degree," he said. "She was here to get an education. She is one of my favorites because she took advantage of all the opportunities we give students, and she did this the right way."

Seltzer said he got to see Trujillo develop as a student and a professional during the three years he worked with her through Tech PR.

"I saw her become an adult practitioner, and it wasn't because she passed classes," Seltzer said. "It was because she got engaged and involved with everything when there was an opportunity."

Trujillo said that she wants to mentor new graduates as they enter the industry, and she wants to learn everything public relations has to offer.

"I'm more of an opportunistic type of person, so I like to go with the flow usually," Trujillo said. "I can't say that I have a specific plan, but I know I want to learn as much as I can in the next few years of my career to go where the winds take me."

 

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Lauren Glover is a graduate student in the College of Media & Communication's professional master's degree program from Plano, Texas.

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Faculty Profile: Bill Dean, Ed.D.
video by Ben Jarvis and Blake Silverthorn

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Ben Jarvis is a senior media strategies major. He is currently president of the College of Media & Communication Dean's Student Council and Texas Tech Association for Students in Electronic Media and works as a videographer for the college's marketing department. Blake Silverthorn is a sophomore electronic media & communications major from Plano, Texas.

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The Hub@TTU
by Allie Carlson

Students in the Texas Tech University College of Media & Communication have a plethora of opportunities for involvement on campus, especially in the college. Just more than a year ago, the college expanded its organizations with the addition of the Hub, an online publication, created by students for students.

According to the Hub's website, its mission is "devoted to providing a collaborative student media environment showcasing the news and the creativity of the Texas Tech community."

Lauren Estlinbaum, senior journalism major from Houston, is the entertainment director for the Hub. She covers everything going on around campus, like what plays are being put on by the theater department, along with off-campus events, as shown in her new "Business Off Broadway" segments.

"The Hub is something totally different," Estlinbaum said. "It's a portfolio online, and I can give potential employers a link to my own website, where they can see everything that I've done for a year and a half."

While the Hub has a full staff, creating and implementing new ideas daily, any student can get his or her work published on the website. Students in the college are constantly producing high-quality work for their classes. Whether they wrote a story for news writing or created a video or short film for an electronic media and communication class, any student can submit and publish their finished work to the Hub.

"I love that you can be as creative as you want," Estlinbaum said. "Our advisers, who are professors here, love when we come up with crazy ideas."

Todd Chambers, Ph.D., chairperson of the Department of Journalism and Electronic Media & Communication, is one of the advisers for the Hub.

"The students working at the Hub are doing an outstanding job," Chambers said. "And they're doing it ethically, they're doing it responsibly, and they're doing it professionally."

In the journalism industry, keeping up with the growing technology and staying current with the audience's interests is crucial, but ethics, responsibility and professionalism will never be a thing of the past, and the college's student-run organizations are a great example of implementing those standards.

"The Hub has been one of the best experiences for me," Estlinbaum said. "It gives a huge advantage to your work in school and for future employment opportunities. I would really encourage students to take advantage of the Hub whether it's working there or just submitting work to get published."

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Allie Carlson is a junior public relations major from Austin, Texas.

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Get To Know Your Ambassador: Maria Vice

Maria Vice is a senior public relations major from Austin, Texas.

 

What do you love about being in the Texas Tech University College of Media & Communication?

I love meeting people all the time. I'm new to the program, so every class we do group projects in, I get to make new friends.

 

What are you involved in outside and inside of the college?

The Ambassadors program here in the college, and HON, the honors college organization.

 

What are your hobbies?

I like to draw. I was in the architecture program for a year and a half, so drawing on my own is how I get my fix.

 

What are you most excited about as an ambassador?

I'm most excited about making a close group of friends, and being able to work these recruiting events. I remember my freshman year, not knowing what I wanted to do, so I like being able to help people by influencing them to choose our college.

 

What is your favorite Texas Tech tradition?

The obsession with football. I was a band person in high school, but the second you come to Tech you can't help but become obsessed with the football games.

 

What advice do you have for a prospective student?

Find the organizations that you really enjoy, and stick with them, because that's where you're going to get the most out of your college experience. It's the people and the experiences that really make college special.

 

What is a fun/interesting fact about you?

I'm learning ukulele.

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Major Spotlight: Public Relations
by Allie Carlson, photo by David Vaughn

Public relations sometimes promotes the misconception that it only concerns media relations, publicity and event planning. While public relations certainly includes these important areas of the industry, it offers a wider variety of career opportunities.

Public relations involves crisis communication, non-profit communication, donor relations, public affairs, health communication, political communication, and much more.

Trent Seltzer, Ph.D., has been the public relations chairperson in the Texas Tech University College of Media & Communication for three years. Seltzer earned his doctorate degree and taught courses at the University of Florida.

Seltzer said the college has a special public relations program.

"The way we look at public relations in this program," Seltzer said, "is that it's more about communication management and relationship management. We are the people who are the public face of the organization."

Seltzer said public relations overlaps with the other disciplines in the communication industry, like advertising, electronic media and journalism. Public relations utilizes different aspects of each discipline in order to communicate and form relationships with an individual's or an organization's intended audiences.

The public relations program at Texas Tech has gone through some recent changes.

"This year we just finished a two-year process of re-evaluating the program and looking at what our ideal PR major is going to look like when they leave here," Seltzer said, "working backwards to evaluate what tools and knowledge they need and fitting that into the different courses and the program as a whole."

A social media and public relations course is now required for all public relations majors, and ties in with the social media lab, Outpost. The program also restructured existing courses in order to make them up-to-date, so public relations majors graduate with the most updated knowledge and skills.

Seltzer said this program focuses on the strategy component behind decisions, such as when to write a press release, when to use Facebook, when to plan an event, and how to structure the messaging, in order for all of these elements to succeed.

"We have some courses that are unique compared to other programs, for example the Professionalism and Practice course," Seltzer said.

The Professionalism and Practice course focuses on the industry of public relations, and discusses specific firms and what they do. It instructs students on how to manage a public relations career, and how to manage a team, preparing students for a long-term career.

"We're not training you just to get that first job," Seltzer said.

With the renovation of the former Business Administration building, the college not only has more space to allow the program to grow, but doubled the size of the faculty. Seltzer said all the faculty have diverse professional experience in the public relations field.

The college offers public relations majors specific opportunities to get involved, such as Tech PR, RaiderComm, a student-run public relations firm, and Outpost, the college's own social media lab, along with professors willing to help students get the most of their time here at Texas Tech.

"It's up to you," Seltzer said, "to determine whether that piece of paper is a degree or an education."

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Allie Carlson is a junior public relations major from Austin, Texas. David Vaughn is a senior university studies major from Spur, Texas, and works as a photographer for the college's marketing department.

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The College of Media & Communication Announces New App
By Lauren Glover

The Texas Tech University College of Media & Communication released an app in November dedicated to serving the college's students.

Planning of the app began after Founding Dean Jerry Hudson, Ph.D., brought the idea of a college app to Associate Professor Randy Reddick, Ph.D., who then focused on what the app would do.

"At that time, if all you wanted was an app, I could have converted one of our websites into a mobile app in less than a half hour," Reddick said. "It would have been easy enough to do, but that defeats some of the purpose and it would not be much of an app."

Reddick and web design specialist Andrew Byrne, M.A., set out to research what features would be most useful and desirable to students, faculty and staff of the college.

The research process took about a year, during which Reddick and Byrne surveyed existing apps, talked with students, and conducted beta testing.

"I started talking to people in my class and our interns to get a feel for what features would and would not be worthwhile," Byrne said. "I've really had a hand in sorting out feature requests. I would take them to Reddick and rank them by which ones we were told and felt were most important."

The Official Texas Tech College of Media & Communication App includes a system to look at academic advisers' schedules to make appointments, a live audio stream of KTXT-FM, and news feeds from the Hub@TTU and KTXT-FM. Students can even influence how the app looks through entering the monthly photo contest to have their photo featured on the app's home screen.

The app can be downloaded from the iTunes app store.

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Lauren Glover is a graduate student in the College of Media & Communication's professional master's degree program from Plano, Texas.

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