Marcelyn Love used to toil in a residence hall cafeteria, but now all she serves up is leadership for an important student organization.
Love, a senior corporate communication major, is president of Public Relations Student Society of America. PRSSA is a well-regarded, pre-professional organization that seeks to enhance the knowledge of its members and provide access to professionals working in the field as well as providing internships.
Love zeroed in on public relations because it involves her personal interests.
“I started out being really interested in public relations because I like to talk, and I like forming relationships with people,” she said. “It’s a lot of fun and very interesting. You can do a lot of stuff with it. It’s always changing. You never get the same day when you are working in PR. You never know what’s going to come up. Whether it’s an event, or let’s hope it’s not, a crisis or something positive happens. It’s always something different. It’s fast moving, and it’s not the same steady eight-to-five job every day.”
There was a time when Love never could have imagined being president of such an organization. She didn’t want to leave her family behind and was intimidated by going away to college.
“I have become more independent because you really have to at a place like this,” she said. “There are more than 25,000 people on this campus. You need to find yourself and realize who you are. I have just grown and matured over the past couple of years.”
Walter Atkinson, assistant communication professor and PRSSA’s faculty adviser, said Love has truly found her voice and used it to great effect.
“She’s an extremely capable leader and has done a very good job this year,” he said. “She’s very smart, an excellent student and very personable – [she’s] a person with exceptional leadership skills and very good interpersonal skills, which is what you need to be a leader.”
Love has found that being president has its own challenges.
“It keeps you really busy. It’s not a bad thing, but you definitely have less time,” she said. “The toughest part of being president is trying to make sure that we are putting on programs that our members are getting something out of. We don’t want them to be bored or think that’s not worthwhile.”
That hasn’t been much of a challenge lately.
PRSSA is organizing an organ donor awareness bash. The event, to be staged April 10, will promote organ and tissue donation. Celebrities will be on hand to serve as witnesses for donors, and participants later will party the night away at Otto’s.
“It makes you feel wonderful,” she said. “Instead of doing something for social reasons or something that has no impact, you are doing something that can really help someone while furthering your own career goals.”
In her spare time, Love enjoys hanging out with friends and watching television – anything that doesn’t involve too much work.
Justin Benoit, a sophomore business major, lives on the same residence hall floor as Love and greatly admires her people skills.
“She’s very involved,” he said. “She’s friends with everyone on her floor. She’s the type of person everyone gets along with. I definitely look up to her. She knows what she has to do, and she gets it done with plenty of time.”
Someday Love hopes to be in charge of public relations for a company or doing freelance work. When that happens, she will reflect upon her time at NIU with fond memories.
“Northern has given me new experiences and the drive to succeed and go out in the world and find stuff that you are not used to and branch out and look for something higher and better,” she said.
PRSSA holds weekly meetings at 9 p.m. on Wednesdays at DuSable Hall, Room 322.