During the final week of spring classes, communication major Erin Schmidt ’25 and her team of peers stood in the boardroom of the Rome Floyd Chamber to present research to professionals from AdventHealth. Their semester-long project — Pulse Check: Community Perception of AdventHealth in Rome, Georgia — provided insights through quantitative and qualitative measures. The AdventHealth representatives, notes in hand, guaranteed the students’ findings would influence future decision-making.
Real-world application of knowledge is a hallmark of learning at Berry College, as exemplified by the Research and Campaigns public relation class taught by Associate Professor of Communication Kimberly Field-Springer.
While a challenging project, Erin is proud of the outcome.
“Dr. Field-Springer mentioned that this research is something professionals do,” Erin says. “We did it on top of other course loads, athletics and other jobs. … At the end of the day, taking the information we got and being able to present it to the AdventHealth team was just a really cool experience.”
Erin attributed the success of the project to a variety of factors, including mentorship and student work opportunities at Berry.
In one LifeWorks position, Erin conducted research with Samantha Nazione, associate professor of business communication, exploring patient-provider relationships in the health care field. In another, Erin served as Field-Springer’s teaching assistant for a health communication class.
“I think already having some base knowledge from my research and helping with Dr. Field-Springer’s classes really helped me,” Erin says. “And it also made this project something I was able to be very passionate about. … I loved being able to work with such an awesome team —both my team and the AdventHealth team.”
She adds, “The AdventHealth team didn't treat us like we were students who didn't know what we were doing. They treated us as if we were professionals, too.”
This experience was the final piece of Erin’s successful college career. In addition to her health communication-oriented jobs, she wrote for the college lifestyle magazine, Valkyrie, and coordinated public relations for Viking Fusion, Berry’s student-run multimedia site. She also competed as an NCAA Division III athlete all four years.
In the fall, Erin will head to Virginia Tech to pursue her master’s in communication, fully funded through a teaching assistantship.
Reflecting on her Berry Journey, she emphasizes the importance of hands-on experiences and how Berry faculty provided her with those opportunities.
“I can't thank Dr. Field-Springer enough for all of my classes I've taken with her,” Erin says. “I've gotten to work with clients in the Rome community and do real-world things. And I think that experience is very important as we all graduate and move on to the next thing, the next chapter. It's important that I and everyone else in the communication department, especially public relations, feel prepared. And I think that she does a great job of doing that.”
Photos by Elizabeth Chandler
