Celebrating Success: The Best Student Posts This Term

My J452: Strategic PR Communication students have been blogging all term. As I grade their blogs today, I’m finding a lot of great stuff and wanted to highlight the best of the term’s posts. I encourage you to check them out!

One thing I have loved this term (and I need to explore more with my classes) is the beautiful cross section of interests. Whether it’s sports and PR, fashion and PR, public health, or art and PR – these students are focused and clear on what they love and how PR will help get them there.

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Lance Heisler: And Post!…Slow Down, Champ
Lance’s post about finding your voice & getting comfortable with blogging is has some great insights and some tips for doing it right.

Jenna Starkey: Overcoming Nerves and Procrastination
Jenna, like many over-achieving PR students, has a lot on her plate and at the beginning of a particularly challenging week, she spent a little time reflecting and (lucky for us!) sharing tips she’s learned.

Joani Jones: Is There Ever a Time for Sports and Politics to Mix?
Joani does a nice job of combing two things she passionate about – sports and PR. This post was an interesting take on how teams were reacting (or not) to the controversial immigration law in Arizona.

Kathleen Sumagit-Rivera: Emerging Social Media Apps
Kathleen has a lot of great social media basic (and even not-so-basic) tips on her blog. I liked this post. I enjoy using foursquare, but haven’t started using Gowalla yet. This was a handy breakdown of the two services and how they compare.

Lauren Switzer: Trending Topics, An Analysis
I’m a huge geek and I love when students can dig in a little on geekish topics. I learned something new here and think “twitter bomb” is a going to catch on as a phrase.  And this post on portfolios is one of my faves of all time.

Ana Stgar: How To Practice Sustainable PR
Ana’s taken a sports bent with her content, which is terrific. But she also has a depth of opinion and interest in sustainability. I suppose the two aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive… Anyway, this is a great post on sustainable PR.

Kate Malinoski: In Defense of Multiple Identities
Kate talks about how we all have multiple “versions” of ourselves based on our audience and for her (and many), Facebook is mostly social. She makes a good argument, although I’d say the more comfortable you become with yourself, what you have to offer, and your place in the world, the urge to keep distinct personas abates.

Amy Shelton: Social Media Strategists Gamble with ChatRoulette
Amy’s interest in public health campaigns is clear throughout her blog and this post does a great job of combining her two interests (PR & public health) to show how one organization used ChatRoulette as the channel for an HIV campaign.

Samantha Luthra: When the Internt Becomes the Playground – Teens and Social Media Bullying
Sam’s passions are fashion and PR. This post veers slightly from that, but has a great anecdote and tips for being smart about cyberbullying. Sam, your sister is lucky to have a big sis watching out for her.

Nicole Perkins: Creating Community and Managing the Unmanageable: Fostering an Online Community.
Nicole’s focus on the arts makes for very interesting content on her blog (Nicole, I think you got over that “boring” thing you were worried about). Nicole is also gearing up for a year-long process managing an online community next year, so these two posts for her are timely and valuable ways to think about her role. For the rest of us, we just get to tag along and enjoy her writing.

photo via Flickr by edensgate