UNT and the Class of 2026 - Blog 14

    Courtney Wright is a second grade teacher at Uplift Education. On Thursday, April 26, 2012 her second grade class and another took a field trip to UNT. Courtney is a UNT and NT40 alumni and asked current NT40 members to help put together a tour for her students. Administration and Athletics jumped on board and thought this idea to get the elementary kids excited about UNT was the best thing.

    The second grade tour started with a full fledged tour of Apogee Stadium lead by NT40 members and Paul Batchelder, Senior Associate AD, Marketing. The students we led through the tunnels underneath the stadium and met some of the players that were there training. Next, they were taken up to the 5th floor to overlook the stadium at the highest point on the balcony. They were given a tour of the President’s Suite and the club level as well. They were so excited to see how the rooms transformed in order to host a press conference.


    The students were then taken to the main entry level of the stadium stands and were walking to the field when they spotted UNT’s beloved mascot, Scrappy the eagle. The second grade students took off running toward Scrappy hugging and jumping all over him. The alumni, current students and faculty in attendance fell silent with a proud smile on their face when the chorus of the song made it to them. The second graders were singing the UNT fight song with all their might and the UNT spirit was strong in them. 


    “Visiting UNT with my kids was so much fun. Watching them run to Scrappy while screaming the fight song, having a picnic on the football field and a shopping spree in the bookstore all made this an amazing day. Or as one of my kids said, ‘Today was the best day of my life.’ Love the Mean Green and my Mean Green class of 2026” said Courtney Wright.

    The second graders were able to have a picnic on the field with Scrappy and some of the athletic staff. They then were shown around the main campus and were able to see a real college classroom. The students were beyond thrilled and hyper to get to the bookstore and have their parents buy UNT swag for them. 

    “We should do this with all of our alums that are teachers,” said Paul Batchelder. “If we can get the kids out there growing up loving UNT then we would be in far better shape. These kids that live around here should grow up with the spirit of UNT and not the other Texas schools such as UT.”

    The tour was from 9:30 am to 1:00 pm on Thursday and took administration and athletics three weeks to prepare everything. This was the best example of PR that I have seen from UNT. It is not enough to just rely on the current students to tell their friends about UNT but for them to take the time and reach out to the surrounding schools was smart. And as Paul said, it is important to start them young so that they grow up loving UNT and when it comes time to apply they apply here at the school they grew up cheering for.

College Students Use of Promotions - Blog 13

    I was looking around a lot this week to see how college students perceive public relations. I was curious to know what most people know about it and think about it. This was a perfect week for this too because most of my friends are in the Greek Community. Two of the fraternities had philanthropy events and contests this week.

    I was asking their PR chairs what they think PR is and most of their responses about were what I have come to learn as advertising. It made me think should there really be a define line between the two? Isn’t there a very good reason why the school combined the two majors into one? I have been talking with different employers and looking at job openings and so many are in the communications department where you need strong skills in both PR and advertising.

Cut The Chis flyers.

    So the best word we came up with that described what they thought of PR was promotions. It seemed like a mix of PR and advertising. And this week I have seen so many ways of the fraternities promoting their event. They used social media in the biggest way I have seen them do yet. Part of their week long events includes Facebook “like” contests. The participants that have the most “likes” on their page will win extra points at the end of the event. And the Facebook pages are not limited to reaching just UNT students. Alpha Phi sorority had their page reach the the national level. Their nationals event re-posted the link to the page so that every Alpha Phi world wide would see it. It seems crazy that just a UNT event could reach that many people so far away.

Participating sororities driving around campus with their banners on their cars.

    The other fraternity also used social media but not as intensely as the other group. The Sigma Chis had their yearly event, Derby Days, this week and their strongest “promotion” technique they used was through the form of t-shirts. Something so simple went a long way. Just on Thursday when we were collecting money outside the union I saw so many people wearing the same Derby Days shirt. People were asking us why we were all in the same shirt and what it was about. This was excellent PR in the word of mouth sense.

    It was quit a week for Greek Life. With the shirts, banners, social media and flyers all around campus people took notice. We were able to have many successful events all week and raised over $200 in one day for one philanthropy. The other events did just as well. And all week we promoted the Greek Preview Day that is happening this weekend.

Cut The Chis - Trenton Conger donating his hair to Wigs For Kids.

    All in all, I feel like I learned a lot from this week. I sort of thought PR was just press releases and fact sheets but this week was fun. From painting banners to sticking up Cut the Chis flyers all over campus I learned how others view PR and how in the real world public relations and advertising are mixed together and promotions is just as important as having a well put together press release.

Internship - Blog 12

    So I’m excited to announce that I got offered an internship! I wanted to talk about it and how excited I am to be doing it this summer. It is with Substance Abuse Resource Center (SARC) on campus. I will be in charge of all their PR.

    I’m really excited to be vamping up their social media presence. I am going to start Tweeting out Tweets that students would be smart to remember. Such as, standard drink sizes and what not. Also, we are looking forward to working with Denton PD on getting statistics to Tweet about the statistics for at risk weekends.

    I will also be working at the orientations talking to students and parents. I get to update all the promotional materials and presentations that will be distributed to them. This will be a really great experience for me in the PR world because so far I have only learned about it in a classroom and not seen it done in the real world. Everyone says that once you have an internship you will fall back in love with your major and I need that badly. It’s even a double win for me because I will be getting to work in Higher Education which is what I want to go to graduate school for.

    This summer will be filled with a lot of research, writing, advertising, promoting and presenting but I am ready for it and can’t wait to see what it teaches me and I’m ready to learn.

    I have never been more excited to learn from a first hand experience in public relations.

Handling The Tornado - Blog 11

    This past Tuesday UNT students experienced the unorganized crisis management of UNT. At 2:30 p.m. the Denton community became very aware of the severe weather heading its way. In severe weather incidents in the past UNT has issued an Eagle Alert that goes out to all the students and registered emails and numbers informing them of the safety concerns and any important information/announcements the school makes. By 3 p.m. when the storm was expected to hit the students had not received any form of alert.

    What does this have to do with PR? It has everything to do with it. Right then in the moment UNT was creating a crisis management good or bad to be determined in the end. But as PR agents we are told to always handle the situation before it explodes. It’s easier to clean up a small mess than it is to clean up a big one. UNT had the mentality of go big or go home. The persona they were giving off to the students and the students’ families was that the safety and accurate information for the students was not the main priority. UNT is one of Texas’ largest commuter schools.

    Some students on campus were lucky to hear the tornado sirens and knew to make it to a safe building until it was over, but there were many classes going on that had no knowledge of the sirens or the issue going on. UNT not only had poor communication to the students but also equally poor communication to the faculty and staff. There were many offices located in parts of the building that have absolutely no access to information. Whether it was because UNT determined they were in a safe spot or not it would have beneficial to the teachers to know the severity so that they could inform their own students not to make the trip to Denton.

    Poor communication never leads to good PR. It gives PR people a harder time having to deal with it later. UNT had however posted several comments on their official Facebook site. It was a nice touch for the students that had access to the internet but this is not the normal form of communication between students and UNT. We students are used to the Eagle Alerts as well as the teachers. The school doesn’t promote the use of non-school related internet activity in class so the students that were in class really didn’t know to check Facebook or to even go straight to the official UNT Facebook.

    Of course there were comments on the warnings from students and parents. UNT was being accused of not caring about the safety of its students. TWU just down the road from UNT had sent an alert to all the students informing them of the cancellation of classes by 2:35 p.m. The one good thing the UNT did do throughout this entire mess was that they were smart enough to comment back in reply to the negative concerns. It would have looked worse if they had ignored them all together. But, the heat they received from upset people will be around for a while and something that UNT will need good publicity and PR for. Needless to say they did not handle the tornado well.

Source:
http://www.facebook.com/northtexas