Communications
Projects and Writing Samples
Table of Contents
- Shenandoah National Park Trust Campaign
- Reflective Essay
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- FDA Crisis Manual
- Professional Biography
- Backgrounder
- Targeted Media Pitch
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- How to Behave When Your Friends Die
- JMU College of Arts and Letters Undergraduate Research Conference
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Projects
SOS: Stories of Survivors
During the Fall 2022 semester, Dr. Whitfield's Organizational Communication class, of James Madison University, worked alongside the nonprofit, New Directions, and a photography class, to turn the experiences of domestic abuse survivors into meaningful artwork. The stories were collected by the Story Collecting Group, and then promptly shared with the photography class. Once the photography class created the artwork, the pieces were shown at an event held at New Directions on November 30th 2022, where a silent auction was held for the purchasing of the artwork.
Mission Statement
To work alongside domestic violence survivors in order to provide accurate and ethically obtained stories for the photography class to devise into art.
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My Contributions
My main contribution was managing the email communication between the coordinator of events and five anonymous domestic abuse survivors. I conducted two interviews and participated in a third. After the interviews, I created two transcripts and a filing system to manage all five transcripts and their respective summaries; providing access on a need to know basis protecting the interviewee's privacy.
Media Coverage
1) WHSV; The students behind "Powerful Voices: Stories of Survivors. (interviewed in this clip)
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2) News Leader; Powerful Voices: A Story in Pictures of Surviving Domestic Violence.
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3) JMU Breeze; Student Artwork Brings Survivors' Stories to Life.
Great Community Give: Shenandoah National Park Trust
Spring 2024 semester was the semester of my Communications Senior Capstone. For this project, myself and a partner collaborated with the head of Marketing for the Shenandoah National Park Trust to create a campaign for a local day of giving.
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Objective
To work alongside The Shenandoah National Park Trust to develop and execute a successful campaign appropriate for Harrisonburg's Great Community Give.
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My Contributions
After a preliminary meeting, the team had established specific roles for everyone. My role was to devise email copy about the Great Community Give to be sent to the trust's email subscribers. I was given the angle of pushing the Trust's 'Ticket To Ride' program. This program provides transportation to the park for title 1 schools. Find my email copy here
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Skills Practiced
- Remote Collaboration
- Strategic Community Outreach
- Email copy writing
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Social Media Calendar
As the Fall 2023 semester came to a close, I completed a social media content calendar with one partner for my Advanced PR writing class. This project entailed creating posts and captions for every day of the month, and creating captions of variety based on the platform the post was to be published.
PR Writing Samples
FDA Crisis Manual
Mock crisis manual for the Food and Drug Association. This crisis manual was written as an assignment for SCOM 369, Topics in Engaged Public Relations: Public Relations in Health Industry.
Professional Biography
Eliza Snipes' formal biography. Features a more in-depth description of her journey and experiences.
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​Backgrounder
Mock backgrounder written as an assignment in SCOM 367, Advanced PR writing techniques.
​Targeted Media Pitch
Mock media pitch that pitches a story about a fictional campaign grant from the city of Harrisonburg, VA.
Link to Targeted Media Pitch
Research Projects
How to Behave When Your Friends Die: Attitudes and Beliefs towards Grief in the Individual, and how it compares to those of Society
SCOM 280, Introduction to Communication Research focused on the explanation and application of research done in the field of communications. The paper is a semester-long culmination of research I did and hypothetical focus group and questionnaire to the benefit of my research question, 'How does the threat of violating societal grieving expectations effect one’s healing process?'.
JMU College of Arts and Letters Undergraduate Research Conference
Eliza Snipes presenting the Terror Management Research Labs' poster 'A Quantitative investigation of Relational Cognitive Distortions Among the Suicidal with Traditional Terror Management Measures'
The research put quantitative reasoning behind the age-old saying 'check in on your friends' by measuring Relational Cognitive Distortions of people with suicidal ideation.
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