Seung Ha Lee

Chase Merrill

Andrew Nguyen

Aiman Hadi

11 April 2017

Public Campaign for Stress

PITCH:

Our public campaign is focused on providing education to Northeastern students about stress and its

impact in their co-op work environment. The goal of our campaign is for Northeastern students to be aware of

the causes and effects of stress from their personal life and at their work. While stress is a common mental

health problem, the co-op department does not address this issue in a professional manner. Therefore, our

campaign fulfills this gap to prevent further harm in their health and work. Our primary audiences are

Northeastern students who are searching for co-ops or who are currently on their co-ops. These students can

access our campaign from the Stearns Cooperative Education Center. We believe that students who are in the

co-op program will most likely be interacting with advisors and counselors in the Stearns Center. The document

we plan to develop is a flyer that addresses the issues of stress. Students who come across the Stearns Center

can freely pick up a flyer if they are interested in learning about stress. Co-op advisors and counselors can

reference the flyer to caution students about any consequences of stress during their co-ops. The flyer will

address not only the causes and effects of stress, but also provide resources to combat stress.

AUDIENCE:

The difficult struggle of being a student is the constant demand to excel in their work when they may be

in a roadblock that inhibits them to perform their best. With the co-op program, Northeastern students

commonly face stress. The co-op process is a tedious procedure for most students at Northeastern University.

Students not only have to juggle their classes, but also prepare for resumes and interviews on top of their busy
schedules. When students are finally employed for their co-op, they face new workplace challenges that can

induce newfound stress.

Northeastern students are the main targets of audience because the school offers co-op programs that

students generally partake in. Within Northeastern, students from all ages, races, genders and academic levels

are considered our target audiences. Anxiety and Depression Association of America had reported that 85% of

college students felt overwhelmed by everything they had to do at some point within their past year. Therefore,

any student can experience stress under work pressure.

Students can access our flyers at the Northeastern Stearns Center. Stearns Center is a building where

most students who are searching for co-ops or employed as co-ops would most likely visit. Students interact

with co-op advisors and counselors at the Stearns Center frequently, thus we believe that placing flyers in

Stearns would be a strategic location. These flyers can be visually displayed on the building walls, placed

around other co-op resources, or personally distributed by Northeastern staffs.

CAMPAIGN:

Our public education campaign is to inform students the causes and effects of stress and steps to

alleviate stress in their overall lives. One of our campaign goals is to identify what kind of stress students may

likely face in their workplace or personal lives. Our campaign will first define what a workplace stress is to

students who are unfamiliar with the term. The flyer will then categorize different causes of stress from working

as a co-op and from home. This is meant to address expectations of co-op students as newly minted full time

employees and how they must adapt to different types of workplace stress. The flyer will also address factors of

stress at home to emphasize how stress can impact work productivity. In the mtvU Associated Press survey,

about 60% of students reported that severe stress interfered with their ability to complete their work more often

than once. Therefore, students who experience stress during their co-op will detrimentally affect their

productivity. This type of information will be beneficial in aiding co-op students for the day that they enter the

workforce. The effects of stress will also be provided to protect the health of co-op students. The flyer will

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address symptoms of stress and long-term effects if stress is left untreated. Specifying stress symptoms allow

co-op students to recognize any of their health issues and become more aware of destructive consequences of

their physical health.

To help students respond to these symptoms, another goal of this campaign is to help our students cope

with the stress they feel at work or at home. The campaign will provide effective tips to relieve stress that any

student can easily perform, such as listening to music or meditating. If these tips are ineffective or insufficient,

our campaign would also allow personal counseling to further de-stress students wellbeing. The flyer will

announce a monthly stress-relieving group event at the Stearns Center for students who feel that they need to

take further actions to alleviate their situation. To provide additional assistance, the flyer will place a disclaimer

at the bottom that provides contact information to the University Health and Counseling Services. For students

who are interested in learning about stress as a subject, the flyer will recommend references to different

websites that discusses about stress.

The importance of our stress campaign is to be mindful of mental health issues for Northeastern students

during co-op. Because stress is commonplace at work, the negative impacts of productivity and physical health

are overlooked. Northeasterns co-op program also lacks resources to inform and combat workplace stress,

which emphasizes the need to educate our students through this campaign. The purpose of a flyer as our main

document is to provide a convenient and accessible solution to stress. Flyers engage our audiences effectively

because the facts and details provided are concise and easy to understand. We believe that focusing on this

campaign will benefit students health and productivity, which also benefits the relationships between

employers and the co-op program. Overall, our public education campaign is to provide aid to Northeastern co-

op students who are experiencing newfound stresses that come with full-time employment.

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