It would be an honor and a privilege to serve the membership of NSPRA if I am elected as vice-president of the South Central Region.

My relationship with NSPRA began in 1979 as a graduate student conducting research for the School PR Program at Glassboro State College in New Jersey. I found the association to be a wealth of information, but it took two years to appreciate NSPRA’s greatest resource – its members. I attended the national seminar in Phoenix as a rookie to the field and within less than a week, I had developed professional friendships that last to this day. Twenty-seven years and eighteen seminars later I continue to rely upon the people and professional resources of NSPRA to be successful in this field.

The role of any professional association should be to build support for the profession it represents and to provide member services that are specific to that profession. As vice-president of NSPRA, I would work towards building a greater awareness of the school PR role with education’s decision-makers in our region; the superintendents and school board members. It is their recognition of school PR as a management function that will ultimately grow this association.

Equally important would be the need to provide high quality and affordable services to our membership. As vice-president, I would work with the president and executive board to support NSPRA’s professional staff in pursuing new products and services that are valuable to members and revenue generating for the association.

What makes our profession unique are the many different paths that led us into school PR. Former teachers, reporters, secretaries, broadcasters, principals, designers and even PR students carry membership with NSPRA. Their talents are many and NSPRA’s role should be to provide opportunities for those members to share their experiences and talents with others. As president, I would work with the NSPRA staff to encourage more members to share their talents and expertise with colleagues through publications and special projects.

As a candidate for NSPRA vice-president, I am able to offer extensive school PR training and experience. My educational background includes a master’s degree in school community relations from Glassboro State College in New Jersey and degrees in education and journalism from Murray State University in Kentucky. I earned APR accreditation in 1987 and also taught a graduate level course in school and community relations for Indiana University-South Bend for six years. I continue my own professional development as an adjunct faculty member at Texas A&M University at Commerce. I also served as president and later as part-time executive director for the Indiana School Public Relations Association. Through my own communications consulting business I have presented approximately fifty workshops on school and community relations topics. I have also contributed numerous articles and reports for various NSPRA publications including two Network articles, two PR scenarios and one Principal Communicator article and a chapter in NSPRA’s School PR Manual.

I believe that an NSPRA vice-president makes a commitment to the membership that he/she will devote the time and energy needed to be successful. I am willing and anxious to make that commitment to members of the South Central Region and hope that NSPRA’s nominating board will give me that opportunity. Thank you for your consideration.