Students Get Chance To Organize Sixth Annual Grunig Lecture

A new communication course gives students the opportunity to plan the sixth annual Grunig Lecture.

by Dustin Levy, The Diamondback 

A new communication course is giving a group of students the opportunity to test their public relations skills by tasking them with planning a major professional networking event as the event’s first completely student-run planning committee.

In the new lecture series event course, 10 students are organizing, planning and running the sixth annual Grunig Lecture, a networking event set to be held Oct. 30 that will feature keynote speaker Dave Senay, the president and CEO of public relations and integrated marketing agency FleishmanHillard.

“In the early goings, I asked student volunteers to help with the lecture, and each year, we’ve done more to make the lecture even richer and more far-reaching,” said Elizabeth Toth, this university’s communication department chair. 

Students have been involved in planning the Grunig Lecture in past years, but because the planning, publicity and post-lecture efforts were so demanding, Toth said, the communication department began offering a three-credit “special events” class, COMM 498G, this year that primarily focuses on planning the lecture. 

Toth developed the Grunig Lecture series to give students a networking opportunity, reach out to alumni in the communication field and honor James and Larissa Grunig, world-renowned communication scholars.

The students are responsible for all aspects of the event, from creating multimedia to providing entertainment to informing the media.

“Everyone really has to be responsible for their own part and then come together as a group,” said senior communication major Lauren Dorris, a member of the planning committee.

For most of the students, planning the lecture is their first experience running an event of any kind, especially one of this magnitude. Senior communication major Melissa Cassorla interned at public relations agency Rogers & Cowan over the summer, but she said she never felt like as much of a leader in planning events as she does for this lecture.

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