Members of the Division of External Relations and the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences communication team celebrate at the 2016 PRSA Colorado Gold Pick Awards ceremony on May 5.
CSU’s Division of External Relations has been named Colorado PR Team of the Year by the state chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.
It is the only time the award has gone to a university public relations team. Last year the honor went to the team that led the grand opening campaign for the renovated Denver Union Station: Sage Hospitality, Dunn Communications, Larimer Associates, Dovetail Solutions and Aiello Public Relations. The Colorado Department of Transportation won it in 2014.
“The Public Relations Team of the Year Award is presented to a team that has achieved outstanding results for its organization and has demonstrated innovation and creativity in its public relations efforts,” PRSA Colorado President Nicole Yost said. “This was a highly competitive year for this award category, with one of the highest numbers of nominations in recent years. CSU External Relations is raising the bar on public relations across mediums, and values the role our profession plays in the strategic business goals of an organization.”
“We are honored and flattered to receive this recognition from our colleagues in the business, who are doing some of the best work in the country,” CSU Vice President for External Relations Tom Milligan said. “When we look at how we’re performing, we don’t just compare ourselves to peers in higher education, but to the entire field of public relations. So this honor is encouraging validation that we are doing a good job.”
Milligan lauded the division’s work in areas like strategic brand management, digital and social media, the news website SOURCE, community outreach and admissions communication.
“This award recognizes the quality work we do in managing the brand for Colorado State and all the writing, editing, photography and video production, design, development and effort that goes into that,” Milligan said. “Also, it speaks to the work we do together inside the division and with all our colleagues and collaborators on campus to really move the university forward. What we do is so much more powerful and effective when we endeavor, as we have, to work in a truly integrated fashion in the service of a larger, institutional ambition.”
The award was announced at the 2016 PRSA Colorado Gold Pick Awards ceremony, held May 5 at the EXDO Event Center in Denver, where the CSU team also picked up five other honors for individual projects completed in 2015.
Those winners were:
- “Better paws for Brutus,” which won a Gold Pick Award in the category Online Communications-Social Media
- “Sustainable bioplastics cooked up in Colorado State Univeristy chemistry lab,” which won a Gold Pick Award in the Feature Story category
- “Bison: Preserving an icon,” which won a Silver Pick Award in the category Integrated Communications-Government
- “CSU students support race relations work in Fort Morgan,” which won a Silver Pick Award in the category Community Relations-Government
- “Pretty brilliant,” which won a Silver Pick Award in the Feature Story category
“The Division of External Relations has helped position the university through strong storytelling and design, and telling those stories across multiple platforms,” PRSA Colorado wrote in its Colorado PR Team of the Year Award announcement. “In the last year, the team has launched a new digital media platform called SOURCE; pursued corporate/organizational partnerships demonstrating outreach and service to the community; and established an internal communications team to focus on strategic messaging.
“Among its accolades in 2015, CSU’s Division of External Relations earned a prestigious Webby award, a Bronze Anvil award from the national Public Relations Society of America, two Telly Awards and five Gold and four Silver Picks from the Colorado Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America,” the announcement continued. “These recent awards and more illustrate that the Division of External Relations is consistently turning out high-quality work that connects with the CSU community, the public in Colorado and the nation.”
In addition to the honors from PRSA Colorado, CSU received the Business Innovator of the Year Award from Visit Fort Collins this week for outstanding innovative work to support Fort Collins tourism.
