Renea Nichols is an assistant teaching professor in the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State University in the Public Relations (PR) and Advertising Department. Each summer she, along with some guest colleagues, host a free digital storytelling workshop for teens in the Bellefonte School District. The project is made possible by the dean’s summer faculty grant created by Dean Marie Hardin of the Bellisario College of Communications.

Nichols worked with teens for five weeks in the inaugural 2018 to complete a “people of Bellefonte” storytelling project similar to “The Humans of New York.”

In summer 2019, the teens elected to tell their personal stories. The teens wrote and recorded their stories for a podcast they titled, “OOF, That’s rough.”

Professor Nichols hopes to grow the PR teen summer workshops with continuous assistance of the dean’s faculty grant program and support of the Bellefonte community.

For more information: email rdn11@psu.edu

(Photo taken by Kate Rarrick, student participant, 2018)