With Visit to Memphis, PR Students Widen Their View of the Communications Field
From Austria and Paris to Italy and New Zealand, the School of Communications proves that the world really is BYU’s campus as students take advantage of experiential learning opportunities beyond the walls of the Brimhall Building.
In spring of 2024, professor Pamela Brubaker took a group of public relations students to Memphis, Tennessee where they spent two days at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital meeting with the internal communications team, editorial team, website team and Diane Roberts, the vice president for the Strategic Communication, Education and Outreach (SCEO) team. While at St. Jude, various members of the SCEO team taught the students how the nonprofit organization functions.
“There are so many different public audiences that St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has to address in various ways such as newsletters, display monitors throughout the hospital, specialized websites and events,” said Brubaker. “This team works on all of that.”
Student Annie Zollinger noticed the way the communications team at St. Jude fostered a culture that prioritized humility and feedback in order to address problems head on with informed solutions. “It was comforting to see that professionals who have been doing this for years are still growing and learning all the time,” Zollinger said. “The way they respond to failures and mistakes really stuck out to me.”
Seeing the various skills needed on a communications team in action expanded student Lauren Walker’s vision of public relations. “I used to think of the communications field as being writing based but one thing that surprised me was the broad range of skills needed,” Walker said. “For example, you have a team that works on the intranet, people who have coding capabilities, people who work on magazines and videography, and more.”
The students had the chance to observe a meeting led by St. Jude’s Director of Internal Communication, Wes Milligan. “It was cool to see all of the different personalities and different departments communicating and deciding what they could do to help each other. They usually work pretty separately,” said Zollinger. “It helped open my eyes to different things I could explore and the different roles that PR can have within organizations because even though the communications team at St. Jude is relatively small, there are still so many specific and specialized roles.”
The group also had the chance to learn from the change management team, a partnership between the public relations and human relations branches that helps the company and patients navigate changes. For example, the change management team works with children receiving cancer treatment and their doctors to help them with a smooth transition to and from the hospital in addition to communicating with parents to ensure that they are equipped with all the necessary information to support such a change. The team also works with the patients’ local doctors so that they can be on the same page with their patients’ care.
“It was so inspiring for me and the students to witness communication leaders and professionals anxiously engaged in a good cause that inspires them to help other people and develop the skills they need to do an exceptional job,” Brubaker said.