I was asked to attend a professional development workshop at my alma mater. It’s a little strange because it was not long ago that I was attending these events as a public relations student. Now, I am in the fortunate position to participate as a practitioner.

This event is headed by Joe Murphy who runs student development events for the CPRS Hamilton Branch in his spare time. We met at the 2007 CPRS Pinnacles event while Joe was still a student. Currently, his ‘billed’ time is spent at Brainstorm Group.

Joe is enthusiastic and ambitious and it’s hard not to get excited when you hear him talk about his ideas. This particular idea is to give 30 PR students access to PR professionals in the form of an afternoon workshop. The afternoon will involve mock interviews, resume critiquing and portfolio building. There will also be an opportunity for the students to ask questions and maybe for me to do a little headhunting (hey…it wont hurt!).

This is a wonderful opportunity for CPRS to become more involved in student life; facilitating student/practitioner relationships is a win-win situation. If this pilot project is successful, and I have no doubt that it will be, it will only lead to more involvment from CPRS, other schools, and perhaps even a wider breadth of PR practitioners.

I will be posting later this week to discuss the event in more detail.