North Road Communications Celebrates 10 Years
Zoom celebration and mural unveiling mark the occasion
Marist's student-run marketing firm, North Road Communications, celebrates its tenth anniversary with a panel of alumni. Source: North Road Communications
North Road Communications (NRC) has long been a part of the Marist College community. For communications students, the student-run marketing firm is an integral part of their education and hands-on experience.
This year, the firm is celebrating ten years with an anniversary celebration, including a mural installation on the campus green on May 1 and a virtual panel on May 5.
The NRC firm began as a capping project by Sabrina Clark, a member of the class of 2011. Over time, it evolved into a club through the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) and eventually became its own organization under the School of Communication. NRC is an entirely student-run integrated marketing firm that works with clients in the community. Students receive no payment or academic credit, but choose to work at NRC due to their pride in the community and to receive valuable experience in the marketing world.
“We’re given a privilege to go to Marist and to get this great education,” Paisley Haddad ‘21 said, one of NRC’s two firm directors. “The fact that we get to use our expertise and pass it onto our clients is really special.”
For NRC's 10th anniversary, design student Sydney Kysar painted a community mural, which was on display on Sat. May 1. Source Paisley Haddad
Both firm directors, Haddad and Allie Foley ‘21, said that the ten year anniversary of the organization came as a shock. When looking over applications for new members in the fall, Hadded and Foley noticed they needed to edit the brief history located at the top of applications to reflect the age of the decade-old firm.
They decided a celebration was in need to honor NRC’s ten year run.
Haddad contacted Clark, Jennie Donohue, the NRC’s first faculty advisor, and many former firm and advertisement directors to attend and speak at the anniversary celebration. After much outreach, the event will feature alumni and a message from President Dennis Murray.
Haddad, Foley, and NRC’s current faculty advisor, Loribeth Greenan, will moderate the event. The anniversary celebration will be on Zoom for panelists, but will be live streamed onto NRC’s YouTube channel for everyone at Marist to watch.
To build awareness for the celebratory event and to improve the sense of community at Marist, a mural by Sydney Kysar '21 will be unveiled on May 1 on the campus green. The mural was designed to represent unity. Beyond the mural, NRC will create a unity wall, on which students can doodle or share stories of what unity means to them.
“Being a senior, I felt the sense of community on campus pre-pandemic and it’s something we really wanted to create one last time before we leave campus,” Foley said.
A sense of unity stretches past one’s time at Marist. NRC’s ten year anniversary celebration, featuring many Marist alumni, is just one event in which former students can continue to demonstrate their pride for the college.
“Unity is what’s going to get us through these hard times,” Haddad said. “That’s why we’ve been able to persevere as a community through pauses and come back strong to campus after being in quarantine. It’s a theme that speaks to us all.”