Today California Husker Betsy Totten earned her Master of Arts in Integrated Media Communications (IMC).
After Totten got her Public Relations and Social Media Certificate from CoJMC, she knew she wanted to continue down the path of earning her masters. Totten found the CoJMC graduate program through a simple “communication schools” Google search.
Totten's bachelor's degree is in journalism, so she put her skills to work and started investigating what was most important to her when it came to learning. She wanted to find a program she felt connected to and discovered the classes CoJMC offers was exactly what she was looking for.
“UNL kept popping up everywhere, and I can honestly say I feel more connected being a Husker in California than I did in my undergrad when I was living on campus at a California school,” Totten said.
Totten isn’t just a graduate student, she works full-time and she and her husband are constantly busy raising their two kids. And at the beginning of quarantine, she and her best friend launched a campaign called “Feed the E.R.” in Humboldt County, located in Northern California.
It all started with a Facebook post that mentioned someone bringing food from local restaurants to the E.R. workers at the local hospital. Totten immediately thought, why not do an entire campaign?
“I just thought, we want to support our healthcare workers and we have so many local restaurants that need support too,” Totten said.
Totten started with $1500 and a small Facebook group to which they invited friends from the area to help get food for the hospital that’s one mile away from her home. As more people joined the group, the team had to grow as well, and they’re now able to feed three hospitals in the Humboldt area.
The Feed the E.R. team is made up of all women, and almost all members are moms except for one who is a student.
“I honestly didn’t set out to have an all-women team, but I had the opportunity to work with fantastic women I’d always hear about from the area, and I grabbed it,” Totten said.
For Totten, the key to success in this campaign has been being able to have complete trust in her teammates because it’s what keeps the campaign organized. The other key factor is the group’s authenticity.
“It all comes down to showing authenticity and featuring real life, and I think especially right now people are loving that,” Totten said. “People want to read about the good others are doing and they want to do it too.”
When Totten gets an idea in her head, especially if it’s a mission for good, she does it 110%. Helping others is what drives her, it’s ingrained and in her blood because both of her parents were directors of nonprofits.
And because Totten's parents were such a great example, she and her husband raise their kids to be people who look out for their neighbors.
They teach them that even the smallest acts of kindness go a long way— like writing positive messages with chalk on the sidewalk or bringing a coffee to their local pharmacist.
“I think a lot of us say ‘I should be doing more’ and then we get overwhelmed at the thought, but we can all be cheerleaders,” Totten said. “We are doing our part just by supporting others and rejoicing in their little victories.”
The Feed the E.R. campaign is still going, it’s now a non-profit Facebook page that you can see here.
