{"id":18507,"date":"2025-11-30T00:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T00:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/?p=18507"},"modified":"2025-12-01T00:12:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T00:12:34","slug":"honoring-dr-betty-farmer-and-her-contributions-to-prssa-at-wcu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/blog\/2025\/11\/30\/honoring-dr-betty-farmer-and-her-contributions-to-prssa-at-wcu\/","title":{"rendered":"Honoring Dr. Betty Farmer and Her Contributions to PRSSA at WCU"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Saturday, Nov. 8, the Department of Communication celebrated 30 years of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) at Western Carolina University.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This celebration honored Betty Farmer, professor of communication, for her time at Western and her involvement in developing the PRSSA organization in the communication department.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Farmer was the faculty advisor who began the WCU chapter of PRSSA.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I wanted to honor Betty at this event because she has been a driving force in educating our students, working to provide impactful learning experiences, and using her skills and experience to benefit the wider Western North Carolina region,\u201d said Scott Eldredge, department head of the Department of Communication. \u201cShe has been tirelessly doing this work for over 30 years.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Farmer and her Public Relations Case Study class planned the 30th anniversary celebration. They planned the entire event, from inviting alumni and honoring Janet Oppenheimer to developing the organization&#8217;s history. At the center of PRSSA at Western is the work Farmer has done.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a surprise, Eldredge and Matt Binford, the broadcasting professor put together a video of alumni who had been impacted by Farmer during her time as a professor at Western.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The video was shown at the anniversary celebration along with the presentation of a plaque commemorating the contributions of Farmer over 30 years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the founding of WCU&#8217;s PRSSA chapter without mentioning Dr. Farmer&#8217;s contributions would be leaving a key point in the story. We have a PRSSA chapter because she started it,\u201d said Eldredge. \u201cIt didn&#8217;t just happen. And starting a chapter was just one of the many, many things she has done to benefit students and create meaningful learning opportunities for them. You can&#8217;t tell the story and history of Public Relations Education in Western North Carolina without mentioning the driving force behind it&#8230;.and that driving force is Dr. Betty Farmer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saturday, Nov. 8, the Department of Communication celebrated 30 years of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) at Western Carolina University. This celebration honored Betty Farmer, professor of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3360,"featured_media":18508,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3360"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18509,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18507\/revisions\/18509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/affiliate.wcu.edu\/comm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}