LSU Communications Specialist Awarded for Illuminating Public Relations Campaign

This September, the LSU College of the Coast & Environment’s communications specialist, Christine Wendling, was awarded a 2020 Lantern Award of Excellence for the exceptional and informative public relations campaign that she began late last year. She capitalized on a hot media topic — the release of Disney’s “Frozen II” — to shine a light on the college’s recently developed coastal meteorology program, which offers a concentration and a minor and helps students develop indispensable career skills, such as generating predictive meteorological models. This award was bestowed by the Southern Public Relations Federation, a network of public, private, and non-profit public relations professionals from Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

According to Christopher D’Elia, professor and dean of the College of the Coast & Environment, “Leveraging a current event to promote academic programs is an excellent example of the creative and innovative ways that we attract future LSU Tigers. I’m so proud of Christine for leading this effort and effectively showcasing that the hard work and the skills that students develop in our college can also be fun.”

In collaboration with Paul Miller, assistant professor of coastal meteorology, Wendling developed a strategy to demonstrate how the new program was educationally valuable and fun by focusing on a particularly engaging and visually compelling class experiment that used the Disney film, “Frozen,” to teach students meteorological modelling. She worked closely with the LSU Division of Strategic Communications to produce an article, video, and several social media posts about the experiment that earned coverage in more than 40 national and local media organizations — including Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, and the Associated Press — and reached more than 297,000 journalists.

“LSU Tigers, like Dr. Miller and the team at Strategic Communications, are some of the best and most inspirational people I have worked with. There is such an encouraging spirit and joie de vivre here that makes it easy and fun to communicate the value of the university,” Wendling said.

In addition to receiving this award, she was elected as a member of the board of directors of the Baton Rouge chapter of the Public Relations Association of Louisiana this July.