Dr. Sadia Cheema, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and the Arts, is teaching a non-profit communication course this semester that is working with the Brain Injury Alliance of New Jersey (BIANJ) on a public relations (PR) campaign called the “Crash Project” to promote transportation safety.
Cheema said that the Brain Injury Alliance of New Jersey is an organization whose mission is to create awareness around people who suffer from a brain injury.
“They just want to improve the quality of life for people who have been impacted by brain injury, by providing support [and] creating advocacy work…to prevent brain injury amongst people,” Cheema said.
When building the strategic public relations campaign, Cheema said that the students were divided into a strategy team, a social media team, and an event management team. The purpose of the campaign is to empower people to have an understanding of transportation safety which is one of the major factors contributing to brain injury.
“We are trying to educate students about pedestrian safety, so they’re more cognizant of how they’re driving,” She said. “Safe drive[ing] actually helps reduce the number of brain injuries that people experience as a result of getting into accidents because of distracted driving.”
Cheema said that when she redesigned the course, she wanted students to learn applied research skills by having them use strategic principles of non-profit communication with real-life clients and case studies.
[This] is not a class where you’re just learning the different models, theories, and frameworks listed in the textbook because PR cannot necessarily be learned that way,” Cheema said. “You have to apply those skills in a setting, so I think the application aspect of the class just makes it so much more fun and exciting, not just for the students, but also for a professor to teach.”
Cheema emphasized that she wants the students to learn professional management skills that will help them showcase that they are different and unique when they enter the job market.
“I’ve had conversations with employers, and they mention that students come from great universities, they have a good GPA, but the one thing that differentiates one student from the other is the human aspect,” Cheema said. “Do you care about your community? Do you care about the people? Are you value-driven? And I think this class prepares them to think about the community, to be value driven, to care about issues that impact others.”
Skie Nicholson, senior marketing and business analysis major, said that the crash project aligns with her career goal of working in brand marketing in the entertainment or retail industry by teaching her how to make a strategy for a public relations campaign.
“With this team, I’m able to see another avenue of how a nonprofit social media works with the goal of raising awareness, just making people aware and educating them rather than selling a product,” Nicholson said. “It’s kind of similar to if I were to do marketing for retail, like educating on why our product is better, why you should buy this product.”
Nicholson shared her experience of working as the team leader for the strategy team of the PR campaign.
“I am learning how to effectively manage the team, meet deadlines, and work well with other people,” Nicholson said. “I am learning to take responsibility for sending out documents, getting the group together, and taking note of every detail that the team needs to keep us on track and making sure we’re doing everything we’re supposed to be doing.”
Brianna Millican, a senior public relations major, said the strategy team is responsible for making a plan on how to bring about awareness of the brain injury alliance to the community.
“We go into the community and do interviews and ask about safety in regards to drunk driving and distracted driving if anyone’s been affected by that,” Millican said.
Millican said that the target of the crash project would be to bring awareness about the organization by having Seton Hall students sign the pledge to be safe drivers.
“We have to get I think a hundred signatures minimum as part of the project. There’s a few other colleges that are participating in this project so each college is making their own strategy,” Millican said. “There’s a winner at the end of the semester to see who was able to get the most signatures or who had the best strategy overall based on tabling events and social media. The prize for winning is having our campaign published on the BIANJ website.”
Paige Murphy, a junior communication major, said that while working on this project she learned how prevalent distracted driving is in today’s society.
“I didn’t realize that so many people got into so many accidents in our town. After speaking to a lot of people, everyone has their own stories about how they’ve seen someone on their phone or they’ve seen someone crash in front of them,” Murphy said. “I think it’s important that we’re bringing awareness to this because it’s obviously very preventable.”
Andrew Palma is a writer for The Setonian’s Campus Life section. He can be reached at andrew.palma@student.shu.edu.
