海角社区 Communications Specialist Awarded for Illuminating Public Relations Campaign
This September, the 海角社区 College of the Coast & Environment鈥檚 communications specialist,
Christine Wendling, was awarded a 2020 Lantern Award of Excellence for the exceptional
and informative public relations campaign that she began late last year. She capitalized
on a hot media topic 鈥� the release of Disney鈥檚 鈥淔rozen II鈥� 鈥� to shine a light on the
college鈥檚 recently developed , which offers a concentration and a minor and helps students develop indispensable
career skills, such as generating predictive meteorological models. This award was
bestowed by the Southern Public Relations Federation, a network of public, private,
and non-profit public relations professionals from Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and
Mississippi.
According to Christopher D鈥橢lia, professor and dean of the College of the Coast & Environment, 鈥淟everaging a current event to promote academic programs is an excellent example of the creative and innovative ways that we attract future 海角社区 Tigers. I鈥檓 so proud of Christine for leading this effort and effectively showcasing that the hard work and the skills that students develop in our college can also be fun.鈥�
In collaboration with Paul Miller, assistant professor of coastal meteorology, Wendling developed a strategy to demonstrate how the new program was educationally valuable and fun by focusing on a particularly engaging and visually compelling class experiment that used the Disney film, 鈥淔rozen,鈥� to teach students meteorological modelling. She worked closely with the 海角社区 Division of Strategic Communications to produce an article, , and several social media posts about the experiment that earned coverage in more than 40 national and local media organizations 鈥� including Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, and the Associated Press 鈥� and reached more than 297,000 journalists.
鈥満＝巧缜� Tigers, like Dr. Miller and the team at Strategic Communications, are some of the best and most inspirational people I have worked with. There is such an encouraging spirit and joie de vivre here that makes it easy and fun to communicate the value of the university,鈥� Wendling said.
In addition to receiving this award, she was elected as a member of the board of directors of the Baton Rouge chapter of the Public Relations Association of Louisiana this July.