Campaigns from the Classroom to the Boardroom

“Don’t just sell yourself and your ideas; sell the concept of public relations as a top management function – then prove that it works.” This quote by John W. Felton, retired vice president for corporate communications at McCormick & Company, Inc, expresses the notion that organizations should not consider public relations an afterthought to management processes. Public relations should be an essential concern in all top-level management decisions. The Public Relations Society of America defines public relations as “a management function that involves counseling at the highest level and being involved in strategic planning for the organization.” Others define the field as reputation management. In short, public relations lies at the heart of any organization and serves as the foundation for the relationship between an organization and its publics. Organizations extend long-range investments in public relations campaigns and utilize such campaigns to propel them towards their overall business objectives and mission statements. Campaigns can address issues, seek solutions to problems, change behaviors, modify laws, or simply solidify an organization’s position in the marketplace. Public relations campaigns are vital to a successful organization yet they are complicated and demanding from a managerial standpoint. Given the complex dynamics of a campaign, it is necessary for students studying public relations to recognize the importance of strategic planning to ensure a meaningful result. As a result, Campaigns from the Classroom to the Boardroom was developed. The aim of Campaigns from the Classroom to the Boardroom was two-fold. First, the program gave students the opportunity to get real life experience working on a public relations campaign. Second, it provided local non-profit organizations the invaluable resource of student creativity and innovation. Campaigns from the Classroom to the Boardroom connected students currently majoring in public relations at URI with organizations belonging to the Central Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce. The students worked with their respective organizations to build a campaign for a real world situation. To ensure the success of this project I embarked on my own public relations campaign. This campaign attracted awareness to the Campaigns from the Classroom to the Boardroom program from both potential students and organization participants. Through my recruitment, eight non-profits and 24 students from a URI class were brought onto the project. These organizations were: A Wish Come True, Inc., Plan USA, the Kent County YMCA, the Rhode Island Center for Law and Public Policy, the Rhode Island Mentoring Partnership, Recycling for Rhode Island Education, VOWS Inc. (Volunteers of Warwick), and the J. Arthur Trudeau Memorial Center. After recruiting these organizations, I paired them with student groups. These students and organizations then met to conduct public relations audits. The students then built a campaign from the organizations’ ideas. The two parties remained in contact throughout the project and built business relationships. Once the students completed their plans, they pitched them to their organizations at an event where the students not only presented their work but networked with the other company representatives. Real life experiences are extremely valuable to a student’s education. Many classrooms lack the opportunity for hands-on projects. At the same time, small businesses and non-profit organizations often struggle to establish new, innovative, and creative ideas for reaching their publics. With the economy in its current recession, this program connected eager students with these organizations in a means that benefited both groups. Campaigns from the Classroom to the Boardroom not only gave students real life work experience and organizations free student help, but sparked business relationships between the students and non-profits that may prove beneficial in the future

Protocol for Surveying Bat Use of Lava Tube Caves during Winter in Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, Standard Operating Procedures

Background The Upper Columbia Basin Network I&M (Inventory and Monitoring) program and Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve are collaborating to monitor winter bat use in Arco Tunnel, which is a safely accessed cave in the northern portion of the monument that consistently has been found with the largest number of bats (~30/year) among the set of caves recently inventoried. The standard operating procedures documented here and the methods described in the associated protocol narrative will also be used to periodically inventory other caves within the monument and surrounding preserve as park resources and safety (winter environmental and accessibility) conditions permit. This protocol addresses the survey objective to regularly count bats in Arco Tunnel during winter (January-March) and in other caves as environmental conditions and staff resources allow. Purpose This SOP describes the step-by-step procedures for preparing for field work and for preparing and organizing field equipment prior to the personnel training and entry into the field. Adequate preparation of equipment for the field and is crucial to a successful monitoring program

Protocol for Surveying Bat Use of Lava Tube Caves During Winter in Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, Version 1.0

Executive Summary The mission of the National Park Service (NPS) is “to conserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the national park system for the enjoyment of this and future generations” (NPS 1999). To uphold this goal, the Director of the NPS approved the Natural Resource Challenge to encourage national parks to focus on the preservation of the nation’s natural heritage through science, natural resource inventories, and expanded resource monitoring (NPS 1999). Through the Challenge, 270 parks in the national park system were organized into 32 inventory and monitoring (I&M) networks. The Upper Columbia Basin Network Inventory and Monitoring Program (UCBN) and Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve (CRMO) are collaborating to inventory and monitor winter bat use of selected lava caves in CRMO following common methods described in this document that have also been implemented in Lava Beds National Monument (LABE). Collaboration among these two parks and the UCBN will help the National Park Service as an agency move toward more efficient and effective conservation of bat resources. Winter surveys of bat use in CRMO lava tubes and other volcanic cave features will be implemented by CRMO staff. The UCBN will also assist CRMO with data management, analysis, and reporting at annual and 5-year intervals. Bats at CRMO are at risk of contracting the fungal disease white-nose syndrome, and also face elevated risk of fatal collisions with large commercial wind turbines which are increasingly common in southern Idaho. An additional concern to bats in the region over time is the threat of increasing aridification associated with accelerated climate change, which is predicted to stress female bats during reproduction and possibly cause some hibernacula to become unsuitable for prolonged torpor. CRMO actively manages visitor use in all caves and the methods outlined in this protocol will provide much needed baseline information about bats that will be used to guide cave management. This protocol details the why, where, how, and when of the CRMO bat cave use survey program for its lava tube caves. As recommended by Oakley et al. (2003), it consists of a protocol narrative and a set of standard operating procedures (SOPs) which detail the steps required to collect, manage, and disseminate the data representing the status and trend of bat use in select caves that are safely accessed in winter, and that are at risk of undesirable human impacts on bats. The SOPs are published in a separate document (Rodhouse et al. 2017), but references to individual SOPs will not be cited in the protocol narrative. An important and highly dynamic aspect of this protocol is the decontamination procedures required to prevent accidental introduction of the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans that causes white-nose syndrome. Decontamination procedures are updated by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) as new information becomes available about effectiveness of cleaning agents. As part of the preparation for field work, the CRMO Project Lead and crew lead will review the most recent decontamination guidelines and train assisting field staff in its implementation. At this time, this protocol does not support the collection of bats under any circumstances. The intent of the protocol is to ensure that the park has the ability to safely and responsibly collect qualitative and quantitative information about the use of CRMO caves by bats during winter

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure