Students in an advertising and public relations capstone course aren’t just completing a class project; they’re piloting a national program that the Lymphoma Research Foundation will use to expand to campuses across the country. And they’re doing it with zero budget.
The catch? To make the pilot successful, students had to prove that a grassroots, relationship-driven approach could work at scale. So they built partnerships at every level: Red Bull donated over 100 cans of their energy drinks, while Celsius committed over four packs of their beverages for campus events. Campus organizations, from Greek life to ASUN, opened their meetings for campaign presentations. Faculty members welcomed students into their classrooms. And Student Life approved high-traffic booth locations across campus.
The result is “Champions of Change,” a comprehensive campaign promoting the Foundation’s new Collegiate Champion Program, an initiative inviting college students nationwide to serve as campus advocates and fundraisers. The success of UNL’s pilot will determine how the nation’s largest nonprofit dedicated exclusively to funding lymphoma research rolls out the program to other universities.
Associate Professor of Advertising and Public Relations Dane Kiambi teaches the capstone course.
“We started the semester talking about what public relations professionals really do; they manage communications and relationships between organizations and their key publics,” Kiambi said. “I told students they’d need to lean on past and current relationships, both internal and external to UNL, to make this campaign work. They’ve proven that relationships are currency in public relations.”
With no budget for incentives or promotional materials, students identified every possible stakeholder, on campus and beyond, who could amplify their message.
“We realized early on that we needed to be everywhere our target audience was,” senior ADPR major Faith Galois said. “It meant thinking strategically about which faculty, student organizations, and campus offices could help us reach students. Every connection mattered.”
The collaboration emerged from both Dr. Kiambi’s passion for nonprofit organizations fighting cancer and UNL’s historic 2022 first-place national win in the Public Relations Student Society of America Bateman Case Study Competition, where his students developed a winning campaign for the Lymphoma Research Foundation.
Building on the momentum from that victory, Dr. Kiambi proposed the idea of a student ambassador model to the Foundation. That outreach led to the current partnership, where Dr. Kiambi’s capstone students now act as a full-service agency piloting the Foundation’s new Collegiate Champion Program.
