Each year, the AEJMC Public Relations Division showcases our members’ service-learning and community-engaged learning pedagogical experiences. In 2023, we are highlighting the work of five members who are bringing real-world communications challenges into the classroom to enrich student learning and impact their communities. Here’s one of our featured stories, and mark your calendars for a virtual brown bag session with our featured members on April 20 at 1 p.m. ET.
Internship program connecting students with local female founders
Cheng Hong | California State University Sacramento
California State University Sacramento is committed to embrace and support its interdependent role in the community and aligns its resources and efforts to cultivate purposeful, long-term, and mutually beneficial partnership across the Sacramento region. As an educator and researcher in public relations, I became especially interested in working with entrepreneurs in the Sacramento and Northern California region, especially how I can leverage my skills and expertise in public relations to help get their ideas off the ground. In my interactions with startup founders, I find many startup founders are short of the personnel who can support their public relations and communication initiatives. So, I partnered with FourthWave, an accelerator for women-led technology businesses, applied and was awarded an internal grant at Sacramento State University. With the grant, I was able to initiate an internship program in my department that hires students to work with different female founders.
Program description: In this program, students were paired with different female founders and worked with them for one semester. Meetings were arranged between students and founders. Based on various needs from different founders, students performed a variety of public relations tasks, such as creating social media posts, writing press releases and media pitches, and collecting secondary information.
Students who get involved in this program should be able to:
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Develop an understanding of the role of public relations in entrepreneurial communication
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Recognize the value of diversity, equity, and inclusion in empowering female founders in an entrepreneurship ecosystem.
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Identify the challenges in public relations practice among startup organizations
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Apply knowledge and skills in public relations to analyze and solve real-world problems
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Create and implement communication strategies/tactics that facilitate startup organizations with their brand building and promotion
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Explore the collaboration between entrepreneurship management and public relations
Students’ feedback has been very positive. One student was eventually hired as a continuing intern with one start-up organization. Two student interns would stay with the same founders for another semester. Students expressed that they “enjoyed this internship” and that they were able to “meet incredible women” founders.