Review of GMU SPJ Summer 2017

While everyone had a fun and successful summer, we are all glad to be back for the 2017-2018 school year and begin working with our SPJ chapter once again! Let's take a look at what our board members have been up to during the summer months.

To start the summer off, board members who live in and around the D.C. area were able to attend the "Connecting with Faceless Journalists- Tapping the Social Media News Desk" seminar at the Navy Memorial & Heritage Center on Pennsylvania Avenue. The event was hosted by PRSA, Public Relations Society of America, and our board members had the opportunity to hear from the social media teams of NBC4 Washington, PBS News Hour, Washington Post and US News. GMU SPJ gained a lot of useful information and will be able to pass it along to their members throughout the school year!

As individuals, our chapter members accomplished many achievements of their own. Senior Dinanda Pramesti (Social Media and Public Relations Chair) spent her summer interning at WUSA9! She was a newsroom intern and some of her tasks included shadowing reporters and assisting them with whatever they needed, doing a lot of research for the investigative unit, scheduling interviews and video editing. She had a great experience and learned a lot!

                                 

Junior Sydney Cano (Vice President) was able to spend her summer at her beautiful home in Hawaii! She was a digital communications intern for Becker Communications in Honolulu. She spent her time drafting social media posts for different clients including Duke's Hawaii, Star of Honolulu, Rock-A-Hula, and Hoakalei Resort. Sydney also worked on analytics, basic photoshop and attended the Hawaii PRSA Koa Anvil Awards (pictured below)! This internship allowed Sydney to strengthen her skills as a Public Relations expert.

                                   

This summer Senior Bria Lloyd (Blogging Chair) was a newsroom intern at WDVM News out of Hagerstown, MD as well as a Street Team Member for NBC4 Washington. She also was lucky enough to receive a scholarship from the Washington D.C. Pro Chapter of The Society of Professional Journalists/ Sigma Delta Chi Foundation. The ceremony was held at the National Press Club and had many amazing guest speakers. 

                                      

                                         

                                       

                                                            

Senior Fareeha Rehman (2016-2017 SPJ President) was able to travel the world with Mason study abroad! She traveled to Italy to study Communication. She was able to experience the world from a different perspective by meeting new people, seeing incredible sights and of course amazing food!

                                                

                                             

                                         

                                               

                                           

GMU SPJ has plenty of world travelers! Sophomore AJ Blomberg (Events Chair) also headed across the world to the Middle East for a Fact Finders Mission with other Mason student leaders to learn more about Israel-Palestine Conflict. They heard from both Israeli's and Palestinian's, government officials and ordinary citizens. A major topic that came up was media coverage and the bias that appears within that coverage. The biggest thing for AJ was to hear about something on the news all the time and then actually be there and see it from the perspective of people who live in those conditions.

For Senior Manny Veizaga (Treasurer) , he was able to take part in quite a few journalism/communication activities. He was able to work on side projects such as help film a wedding and he worked on independent video projects. Manny was also able to meet people in the media industry and network with them. A large part of his summer consisted of working general administration support at a general contracting firm and building proposals in junction to spending time with his best friends and exploring D.C. and NYC!

                                             

                                               

(Left: Manny, Right: Borja Voces, Social Media Anchor for Univision)

Summer 2017 was a great one for Junior Lauren Sullivan (Secretary). This summer she applied to many internships and ended up getting a communication internship with Northrop Grumman for the fall and spring semesters! She will be assisting them with writing content and she is super excited to see where this will take her in the future. It was also very interesting for her to be in Charlottesville while it was so heavy in the media this summer. "Seeing the town I've grown up in since I was born on every major news network made me realize the responsibility we have as journalists," said Lauren. Aside from Journalism, she took her first ever trip to Disney World and it was the best week of her life! She can't wait to go again. 

                                         

                               

                                         

Last but not least, our current 2017-2018 President Lauryn Cantrell, spent her summer painting and taking online classes! As a double major in Government and International Politics and Communication with a concentration in Journalism, taking summer classes was essential to help her further her education at George Mason University. She was also able to spend the rest of her summer catching up with family members and friends from high school who she is thankfully still very close with. She was very content with having a relaxing, laid-back summer!