Students pose for a quick selfie during the 2025 public relations trip to New York City. Photo by Alexa Tusiani

A Creative Field Trip

Each spring, advertising and PR students travel to NYC to network

Every spring break, while some students escape Boston for warmer weather, a small cohort of public relations and advertising students instead heads to New York City. For several days, these seniors and graduate students tour advertising and public relations agencies, learn about the inner workings of the industry and network with communication professionals and BU alumni. 

It’s a “yellow brick road to meeting people,” says Shawn Zupp, a professor of the practice of advertising and one of the faculty coordinators for the trip. He hopes the experience accelerates students’ networking and eases their entry into the job market.

“Here’s a room full of people who want to talk to you,” says Amy Shanler, a professor of the practice of public relations and co-faculty leader for the trip. “To have access to that kind of network in one place…. The hard part is already over.”

According to Shanler (’96,’04, CAS’96), an informal survey of previous years concluded that approximately half of the students who attend end up working at one of the agencies they visit. 

Terry Fassburg (’69), a retired vice president of communications at Philips Electronics, helps fund the excursion. “Many students told me how much they valued the introductions that were made and how the meetings either validated or changed their career goals,” Fassburg says. 

Ashley Duong (’25), a first-generation college student and the first in her family to have an office or corporate job, is an associate on the corporate PR team, specializing in social impact PR, at Weber Shandwick. Duong had visited the global PR firm with her classmates in March 2025. “Going on this trip, more than anything, solidified the fact that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” she says.

Apart from professional networking, there is time for students and faculty to connect. Heera Shetty (’26), a public relations graduate student and a 2025 participant, says undergraduate and graduate students—who usually don’t run in the same circles—bond with each other. “We were able to build relationships with our professors and also with the undergraduates,” Shetty says.

Tobe Berkovitz, an emeritus professor of the practice of advertising, says when he and a colleague started the program in the late 1990s, it was a humble beginning. Since then, COM has developed connections with both larger and up-and-coming agencies and has established an alumni network that includes former trip participants. 

“This is just a real benefit to the students,” Berkovitz says. “It’s a benefit to the alumni because it keeps them in touch with the students. It’s really one of the highlights of the advertising program.”