This week, Belmont’s PRSSA brought home several awards from their national conference including the Teahan Award for Outstanding PRSA/PRSSA Relationship, two National President’s Citations and four Gold Key Awards. Read on to learn more about Cayli Allen, President of Belmont’s PRSSA chapter, and her exciting student organization.
Name: Cayli Allen
Hometown: New Milford, Pennsylvania
Major: Public Relations
Year: Senior
Why Belmont?
I chose Belmont originally for the Music Business program but realized once I got here that, although I wanted to work in entertainment and in music, I also wanted a degree that was also focused on event planning, communications, social media, and journalism, so I switched to PR.
What else are you involved in on campus?
I’m a member of CHAARG, I’m an associate at Tower Creative Consultants, and I’m a member of Grammy U.
A lot of people have heard about PRSSA, but not everyone knows what your organization actually does. Tell me a little bit more about PRSSA on Belmont’s Campus?
So, PRSSA stands for the Public Relations Student Society of America, which is the largest professional organization for aspiring PR and communications professionals. We are one of hundreds of chapters. But, on our campus specifically, we boost our GROW mentorship program where we pair students with professionals one on one, our alumni spotlight series for convo credit, as well as other fun events like resume critiques, mock interviews, etc.
What does the average membership entail?
PRSSA is totally what you make of it. You can be as involved as being in every single committee, being part of the GROW mentorship program, attending every event, being involved nationally, or you can just be a part of GROW or just come to a couple convos or go to a workshop here or there. It’s all totally up to you.
So I know some big changes have been made for PRSSA this semester, can you tell me more about these changes and why they were made?
We really wanted to cater to what our members wanted more of, and after hearing a lot of member feedback, we found that more people were looking for more opportunities to connect with professionals and help create their resumes and to hear from a more diverse group of speakers. We changed the GROW membership a bit to make it a one-on-one pairing with students in their specific areas of interest instead of just being broad. We’ve also begun incorporating our alumni spotlight series in the past year where we feature different alumni every month in a different area of PR, as well as workshops.
Who should join PRSSA?
Everyone! But definitely students who are interested in going into some variation of communication as their career, whether that’s social media, publicity, working in an agency, etc. You learn a lot of great skills, but PRSSA is diverse enough for anyone because we do offer so many professional development events. It’s a really great way to make friends while developing yourself professionally.
Can anyone join PRSSA?
Yes! Anyone can join PRSSA as long as you’re a student! Membership dues are due on October 16, and if students are interested they can email me at cayliallen@gmail.com for more information and the registration form.
What’s something you really want people to know about PRSSA?
It’s more than just professional development. Obviously, that’s our main mission, but I‘ve also made some of my closest friends through here and by becoming involved nationally. We also do a lot of fun philanthropy, we just began setting up our Up ‘Til Dawn team.
Any upcoming events?
Coming up on October 25th at 10:00 am in JAAC 2092 we have an alumni spotlight panel which will be really fun because it’s a panel unlike all the other ones we’ve done in the past year. Instead of just one individual, we’ll have four alumni coming who all work at Phase 3 Marketing and Communications which is a super fascinating agency here in town and a lot of their clients have to do with non-profit work and food. Both of those are some of my favorite things, personally! On October 26, we will be hosting a resume critique for only dues paying members. This is one extra benefit of paying dues that students can reap. We plan on hosting multiple workshops similar to this throughout the school year.”
Make sure to check out Belmont’s PRSSA Chapter on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.