{"id":18267,"date":"2016-08-03T11:57:01","date_gmt":"2016-08-03T15:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.cos.ucf.edu\/?p=18267"},"modified":"2016-08-03T11:57:01","modified_gmt":"2016-08-03T15:57:01","slug":"big-win-adpr-alumnus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/big-win-adpr-alumnus\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Win for Ad\/PR Alumnus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Story by Tommiea Jackson, <a href=\"https:\/\/communication.cos.ucf.edu\/news\/nicholson-news\/\" target=\"_blank\">Nicholson News<\/a><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_18268\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-18268\" class=\"wp-image-18268 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2016\/08\/Steve-Torres-National-Excellence-in-Media-Award-winners-with-Bob-Scheiffer-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"Steve-Torres-National-Excellence-in-Media-Award-winners-with-Bob-Scheiffer\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2016\/08\/Steve-Torres-National-Excellence-in-Media-Award-winners-with-Bob-Scheiffer.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2016\/08\/Steve-Torres-National-Excellence-in-Media-Award-winners-with-Bob-Scheiffer-299x199.jpg 299w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-18268\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steven Torres and his childhood friend Olga Monika Kweyete teamed up to win a national media planning competition in June. They were happy with the award and the $5,000 scholarship, but meeting award-winning journalist Bob Schieffer made them even happier.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Washington, D.C. is more than 850 miles away, but it isn\u2019t too far for a Knight to travel to make his or her presence known. <strong>Steven Torres<\/strong>, &#8217;16, a 2016 College of Sciences advertising-public relations graduate, traveled to the nation\u2019s capital in June and brought home the top prize.<\/p>\n<p>Torres and his teammate, Olga M. Trejos Kweyete of the University of Florida, made up\u00a0one of six teams from across the country that\u00a0advanced past multiple rounds of intense\u00a0competition where they had to put their best research and communication skills to use. Torres and Kweyete, who are childhood friends, each took home $5,000 in scholarships.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am proud to report that my team won first place and was presented with the National Excellence in Media Award by award-winning journalist Bob Schieffer in a room of more than 500 political advertising professionals,\u201d said Torres. \u201cIt was awesome! He gave us all signed copies of his book. We got to chat with him for a little while. The entire event was kind of unreal! Once we found out we\u2019d won. We had so many business cards and people offering us jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While in D.C., Torres met with and toured a number of companies including iHeart Media, Google, Washington Post, POLITICO and many others. This jam-packed week of networking and learning culminated\u00a0on June 9,\u00a0with the Media Plan Case final round presentations and the Awards Ceremony held at the Newseum.<\/p>\n<p>The Washington Media Scholars Foundation, a nonpartisan organization run by\u00a0National Media, one of the leading political, public affairs and issue campaign\u00a0media planning firms, hosts the competition\u00a0every year.<\/p>\n<p>Though he got several job offers to return to the Washington, Torres was happy to return to his job as the deputy press secretary for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in Tallahassee \u2013 a job he\u2019d had for one week before the competition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI want to get more experience and live in Florida a little while longer,\u201d he said. \u201d There are plenty of opportunities in the state capital.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Although he feels blessed with his current position, Torres said he hopes to use his political science minor one day. He has politics on his mind.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy dream is to be press secretary for a while or a public information officer for a large federal government agency like the FBI,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Nicholson faculty members have come to admire Torres and his drive. <a href=\"http:\/\/communication.cos.ucf.edu\/person\/joan-mccain\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Joan McCain<\/strong><\/a>, NSC advertising-public relations area coordinator, counts his success a great success for the school as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSteven really took the initiative on this opportunity, and worked very hard every step of the way,\u201d said McCain. \u201cHis accomplishment brings added recognition for the Nicholson School and the Ad-PR major on a national level.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>View original story, <a href=\"https:\/\/communication.cos.ucf.edu\/torres-takes-big-win-in-national-media-planning-competition\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Story by Tommiea Jackson, Nicholson News Washington, D.C. is more than 850 miles away, but it isn\u2019t too far for a Knight to travel to make his or her presence known. Steven Torres, &#8217;16, a 2016 College of Sciences advertising-public relations graduate, traveled to the nation\u2019s capital in June and brought home the top prize. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":18268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[31,3,38,4,13,37,41,29],"tags":[460,835,1457,1611,1795,2413,2425,2469,2540,2719,3188,3733,3824,3828,3829],"class_list":["post-18267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-news","category-awards","category-breaking-news","category-departments","category-news","category-communication","category-shining-knights","category-ucf-news","tag-bob-schieffer","tag-d-c","tag-google","tag-iheart-media","tag-joan-mccain","tag-national-excellence-in-media-award","tag-national-media","tag-newseum","tag-olga-m-trejos-kweyete","tag-politico","tag-steven-torres","tag-university-of-florida","tag-washington","tag-washington-media-scholars-foundation","tag-washington-post"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Big Win for Ad\/PR Alumnus - College of Sciences News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/big-win-adpr-alumnus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Big Win for Ad\/PR Alumnus - College of Sciences News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Washington, D.C. is more than 850 miles away, but it isn\u2019t too far for a Knight to travel to make his or her presence known. 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