Contact: Harriet Laird

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Several Mississippi State University divisions, departments and offices are bringing home awards this week from the Southern Public Relations Federation’s annual conference in Orange Beach, Alabama.

Among the 13 recognitions received by Mississippi State were two top SPRF Lantern Awards, seven Awards of Excellence and four Certificates of Merit.

MSU’s Office of Public Affairs garnered five honors including two Awards of Excellence for “MSU Digital Communications campaign” and “Summer Advantage promotional campaign” by Checky Herrington, Bethany Shipp, Heather Rowe, Sid Salter and Harriet Laird; and three Certificates of Merit for feature articles by Sasha Steinberg titled “A Bulldog Through and Through” and Allison Matthews’s and Megan Bean’s “The Sky’s the Limit,” and for the 2018 university TV commercial by Checky Herrington, Bethany Shipp, Sid Salter and Harriet Laird.

Three SPRF awards went to MSU’s Office of Agricultural Communications including two Awards of Excellence for “Seed Tech Short Course” by Leah Barbour, Kim Trimm, Ellen Graves, Nathan Gregory, Philip Smith and Amy Myers, and also for the social video campaign “Get to Know Your MSU Extension Agent” by Ellen Graves, Jonathan Parrish and Elizabeth North. The office also received a Certificate of Merit for “The Food Factor: Transition from Broadcast to Blog.”

MSU’s High Performance Computing Collaboratory received a first-place Lantern Award for the “Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems Annual Report” by Diane Godwin, Hailey Hannis and Beth Wynn; two Awards of Excellence for the “CAVS Additive Manufacturing Flyer” and the “Alliance for System Safety of UAS through Research Excellence Technical Report,” both by Diane Godwin and Hailey Hannis.

Terri Hernandez in the university’s Department of Communications received a first-place Lantern Award for the creation of the student-led “Public Relations and Integrated Student Media” agency, known as PRISM.

MSU Agricultural and Natural Resources Marketing won an Award of Excellence for the “Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Experiment Station’s Sales Store Social Media Campaign” by Karen Brasher, Vanessa Beeson, David Ammon, Dominique Belcher, Janiece Pigg and Troy Weaver.

For more on MSU’s Office of Public Affairs, visit www.opa.msstate.edu; Office of Agricultural Communications, www.oac.msstate.edu; High Performance Computing Collaboratory, www.hpc.msstate.edu; Department of Communication, https://www.comm.msstate.edu/ and the student PRISM agency at prism-msstate.com.

The Ag and Natural Resources Marketing Team markets programs for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, cals.msstate.edu; College of Forest Resources, cfr.msstate.edu; Forest and Wildlife Research Center, fwrc.msstate.edu; and the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, mafes.msstate.edu.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.