Strategic Communication program receives grant to educate about alcohol poisoning
Fort Worth, TX
9/22/2011
The Strategic
Communication program in the Schieffer School of Journalism at TCU has received
a $50,000 grant from The Century Council, a not-for-profit funded by distillers
dedicated to fighting drunk driving and underage drinking.
“This grant, a first of
its kind for a campaign course at the School, will be used to further develop,
execute and research a peer-to-peer campaign to educate students about alcohol
poisoning,” announced John Lumpkin, director of the Schieffer School.
The Century Council
awarded the grant in recognition of the Schieffer School team’s promising
approach to educating peers on the symptoms associated with alcohol poisoning,
as presented in their submission to the 2009 American Advertising Federation’s
National Student Advertising Competition (NSAC) sponsored by The Century
Council.
More than 140 teams
participated in NSAC. They were tasked with developing a comprehensive
communications campaign to decrease dangerous overconsumption of alcohol on our
nation’s college campuses. “We have high hopes that this campaign created by
TCU students for TCU students will not only educate students but will save
lives. We believe in empowering the students’ voice and are proud of TCU’s
leadership on this important issue,” said Ralph Blackman, president and CEO,
The Century Council.
The TCU students’
campaign is called VITALS – an acronym that stands for Vomiting, Incoherence,
Temperature, Absence of color, Low breathing and Seizure. It is an offshoot of
the PROOF campaign, their original NSAC submission.
The need to implement a
health communication campaign like VITALS at TCU is supported by a benchmark
survey conducted by Dr. Wendy Macias, assistant professor of strategic
communication. The study revealed that almost one third of TCU undergraduate
students report that they or their friends have experienced alcohol poisoning;
however, their knowledge of the signs of alcohol poisoning that should prompt a
call for medical help shows uncertainty and inconsistencies.
VITALS exemplifies TCU’s
emphasis on collaboration. Although the campaign is taught as a class by Dr.
Amiso George, several strategic communication faculty members, including Dr.
Catherine Coleman, and some campus departments such as the Alcohol and Drug
Education Center are fully participating in the effort to make the campaign a
truly TCU experience.
Dr. Julie O’Neil,
division head of Strategic Communication, said, “The scope of this project is
more substantial than those afforded by most local internships for our
students. Our students' campaign – if successful – may be reproduced on
university campuses across the nation.”
The student-driven campaign
has generated creative communication ideas honed in Professor Bill Johnson’s advertising
class in the summer. The campaign kicks off this month with an introduction to
the VITALS concept and will conclude with an event in April 2012.
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About the Schieffer
School:
Named for CBS News Anchor
and alumnus Bob Schieffer, the Schieffer School of Journalism at TCU offers
majors in journalism and strategic communication and a minor in journalism. The
journalism major uses emerging online platforms as well as traditional
broadcast and print in its learning outcomes. The strategic communication major
uses advertising and public relations tools and approaches to achieve strategic
goals for brands and organizations. TCU’s journalism and strategic communication
programs were the first for private institutions to be fully accredited by the
Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The
school’s undergraduate enrollment is 635 students. Learn more at
www.schiefferschool.tcu.edu
About The Century Council
