Another successful Half Day with a Pro event!

On Wednesday, the Hoosier Chapter hosted its annual Half Day with a Pro event—a tradition that the chapter has continued for more than a decade. This year’s event was one of the biggest on record, with 113 eager PRSSA students registering for the program.

 

Half Day allows students from Indiana’s PRSSA chapters the opportunity to spend a morning job shadowing an area communications  professional, learning career advice, best practices in public relations, and lessons from years of work in the field. During registration, each student identifies which area of public relations they’d like to learn more about (corporate, nonprofit, or agency), and the event co-chairs do their very best to match each student with a professional who best meets their interests.

 

After the job-shadowing portion, the professionals bring their students to the monthly luncheon, which this year featured a student-run panel of local PR pros, including Bob Gildea (Sease, Gerig and Associates); Sonja Popp-Stahly, APR (Eli Lilly and Company); Chris Gahl (Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association); and Courtney Edmonds (Hirons & Company).

 

It is one of my favorite events every year, and I know that I’m not the only professional who feels that way. Something about the enthusiasm of the students makes you think back to when you were at that point in your professional journey and just why you chose public relations in the first place.

 

It also gives you hope for the future of our industry. I had many intelligent conversations with the students, and I know that their thoughtful questions stumped/surprised our panel on more than one occasion.

 

The chapter wishes to extend a big thank you to all of the professionals who hosted a student (Or two. Or 10!), the Indiana PRSSA students in attendance, the panel of pros, the two brave PRSSA students who ran the panel, and luncheon sponsor BohlsenPR,

 

And, of course, the event could not have happened without the hard work of Diana Nolting and Adrienne Bailey, this year’s PRSSA chairs. Here, Nolting talks about the value of Half Day for Indiana PRSSA students.