What is PRSSA?
By: Sara Lawrence
Welcome back Grady students! Whether you spent your break working, studying abroad or spending time with your friends and family, we hope you had an amazing summer and are ready for a great year. As you get settled into life in Athens, it is the perfect time to look for different opportunities to get involved, whether you are a new or returning student at UGA. PRSSA is getting ready to start the semester with our annual kickoff meeting this Tuesday, Sept. 6th! Come join us in Studio 100 at 6:30 p.m. to hear what we have in store for students this Fall.
What exactly is PRSSA?
PRSSA stands for the Public Relations Student Society of America. The Drewy chapter here at UGA brings in speakers from the public relations and communications industry to share their experiences in their various fields of work and to give students both academic and career advice. They provide insight into different internship and job opportunities and advise students on how to use their education at Grady to thrive in the real world. PRSSA has brought in speakers from many notable companies and agencies in the professions of political PR, sports media, entertainment and more.
Why should you join?
PRSSA is an excellent way to make connections with friends in Grady and pursue leadership opportunities! Any of our executive board members or committee heads would love to talk to you about becoming more involved in PRSSA.
Networking
Public relations is all about the connections you make, and by joining us every other Tuesday night, students can form relationships with the speakers and practice their networking skills with both these professionals and their Grady peers. By hearing all about the careers of the speakers, students will learn about many areas of PR that they may be interested in and can start to tailor their education and extracurricular involvement to contribute to what they feel passionate about.
Community
The networking and learning opportunities that students gain from talking with PR professionals are not the only advantages of PRSSA. On UGA’s large campus, it can be difficult to find a close-knit group of people to connect with that share similar goals and career aspirations. This is especially true for underclassmen, before these students enter their major and core Grady classes. PRSSA allows students to connect with their peers in their major, and it creates a space where they can give each other advice and learn from each other. We are a family that makes this huge university feel a little bit smaller.
Extra Involvement & Leadership Opportunities
Besides attending the the meetings, there are many more ways you can add to your experience in PRSSA. Committees are an excellent way to grow your skills in a specific area that you are interested in. Our committees include social media, event planning, public relations, content, diversity and inclusion and others. If you want to dive deeper into social media, you can join this committee and assist in running PRSSA’s Instagram and other social media channels. If you love writing and journalism, you can join the content committee and write blog posts that will provide you with work to add to your portfolio and AP style writing experience. Our committees are the backbone of our club, and joining any one of them is a great way to add to your own skills and help PRSSA continue to thrive.
PRSSA also has many different leadership opportunities. You can apply to be a committee head to oversee the operations of committee members and also serve on the executive board. Having leadership experience is not only a great resume-builder, but also allows students to use their authority to collaborate with their peers on a different level.
What’s in store for this semester?
The PRSSA leadership team worked hard to bring in the best-of-the-best for our members this semester. You will get the opportunity to hear from recent Grady grads and professionals in political, agency and healthcare PR, in addition to preparing for events such as AdPR Connection.
Being a student at UGA and in Grady College is already an accomplishment itself, and PRSSA intends to help students expand their skills outside of class and make the college experience even more exciting and beneficial. We hope to see you this week and cannot wait to add to the PRSSA family!
