Member Q&A with Julie Vincent, APR, Fellow PRSA
The PRSA Hoosier Chapter is conducting member profiles throughout the year to facilitate connections within the Chapter. We are pleased to introduce Julie Vincent.
Name: Julie Vincent, APR, Fellow PRSA
Position: Lecturer of Public Relations, PRSSA Faculty Advisor
Employer: IUPUI
College Attended: B.S. Ball State University; M.S. Butler University
PRSA Position: Past President PRSA Hoosier Chapter
Q: What it means to be a Fellow and the process?
I’m very proud to be a PRSA Fellow. There really aren’t that many of us and it was a goal I set and actually achieved. I now give back by being a Goodfellow to others seeking the Fellow status. The process is intense and gut-wrenching and collaborative and wonderfully terrifying. The wait between the submission of all the materials and “the call” seems like an eternity. I must have proofed and edited my materials 40 times until my husband said, “Either you hit the SEND button or I will!”
Q: What skillset would you like to learn?
At IUPUI, professors can take one class a semester free of most charges. I have only taken advantage of this one time (which is very stupid of me, really) but the one course I took was Introduction to Forensic Science. I would like to learn more about processing a crime scene and then actually do it for real. My only weakness is watching people throw up. Well, dead people don’t do that, but the instructor warned me that while I find it easy to look at goopy slides, I didn’t have to smell them. I still think I could do it. And the knowledge would come in handy should I ever carve out the time to write the crime novel I have rolling around in my head.
Q: What is something most people don’t know about you?
While an undergrad at Ball State University, I competed as a member of the Ball State Judo Club. I was fairly successful, mostly because I am so close to the ground. It’s all about center of gravity as opposed to strength.
Q: What’s your coolest career experience to date?
It wasn’t really the coolest, but it was the most defining of my career – being the Corporate Spokesperson for the Marble Hill Nuclear Plant, being built by then Public Service Indiana (now Duke Energy). It was a plant very few wanted, that was cancelled at 52% completion and had racked a construction bill of $7.2 billion. I was under siege by the media the entire time and was even routinely yelled at, at the mall and other public places, by people I didn’t even know. I had been on TV so often defending the plant, that I was known as “the Marble Hill girl.” UGH. The company even sent me to New York University for a crash course called “Hostile Media Training.” The silver lining is that I found I loved the area of crisis communications, I now teach a course on Issues and Crisis Management at IUPUI and use it in my part-time consulting job with the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.
Q: What’s one place you have yet to travel/or your favorite place you’ve visited?
I have on my bucket list to take a Viking River Cruise. I don’t really even care where it goes. It just looks so great. Probably have to win the lottery first, being on a teaching budget.
Q: Any blogs or websites you regularly frequent?
I live on Twitter – mostly lurking rather than tweeting. I have mine set up as my personal home page, with reporters and news organizations and regular folks I really care to monitor. I find it’s more accurate than not and is certainly much faster than MSM. I’m hooked.