LCC’s Director of Marketing and Strategic Communications
By River Shepherd for The Torch
On a cold night during the January 2024 ice storm, Rebecca I. Long, Lane Community College’s director of Marketing and Strategic Communications, interpreted her power staying on as a sign that she should complete the application for the Public Relations Society of America’s Anvil awards, which “are like the Academy Awards” for public relations Long said.
Long submitted a social media campaign called “Level-Up at Lane” to the PRSA Anvil Awards Integrated Communications category. She had created the campaign when LCC was “between advertising agencies and had no money left for a big project,” Long said.
Instead, Long made creative use of resources to create the campaign’s content and spent $40 on boosting the resulting social media posts for it.
Since LCC’s entry was going up against PR campaigns from companies and organizations with multi-million dollar budgets — such as Walmart — she assumed it would not win an award. Long’s motivation to enter was to get feedback from the judges on her campaign, which she would use to help get the accreditation in PR she was working toward.
“We ended up coming in second place to the United States Navy,” Long said. “We were the first community college in the country to have ever won that particular category.”
Long’s journey to LCC started in Georgia and took her through a career in newspapers, local government, and higher education, eventually leading her to move across the country to Oregon, earning multiple degrees along the way.
‘Hey, easy A, I can write.’
Growing up in a small town in Georgia, Long’s career path was initially inspired in part by the 1993 documentary, “The War Room,” which follows several key people working on former President Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. “A few key moments in that film made me realize not only that I could do this kind of work, but that I wanted to dedicate my career to it.” Long said.
One of those moments was James Carville’s speech to the staff and volunteers on election eve. “He reminded them that what they were doing wasn’t just a job — it was a labor of love. That idea resonated with me then, and it still does today,” Long said.
“The War Room” also showed Long the importance of remaining calm and steady during crisis situations and how doing well in communications requires strong teamwork.
“That documentary helped shape my career path. It showed me that public relations — especially in public service — is about more than messaging,” Long said. “It’s about strategy, trust, and the ability to stay focused under pressure. And that’s what I’ve aimed to bring to every role I’ve had since.”
The only problem was that when
Long first started college, her parents were against the idea of her getting a degree in communications. “My mother actually said, ‘We will support you (going to college), just don’t major in communications,” Long said.
That tune began to change when Long decided to work for the school newspaper for college credit while attending West Georgia College. “I thought, ‘Hey, easy A, I can write,’” Long said.
“My first assignment was interviewing the president of the college, asking him about budget cuts,” Long said. “I was so green I did not know that I should be scared of this interview.”
Long, majoring in education at the time, went breezing into the office of the college president. “I just walked right on in, and said ‘Hi, I need to interview you,’ and the president said, ‘You just walked past like four receptionists and security,’” Long said. “Even though he was looking at me like, ‘have you lost your mind?’ … I got my interview, it ended up on the front page, I got my A, and I changed my major.”
Long’s parents began to come around when she brought home a newspaper listing all the careers someone could go into after graduating with a degree in the field. “My mother said ‘OK, I don’t know about this, but we’re going to support you,’” Long said.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Communication with a focus on Public Relations and Media Studies from Kennesaw State University, Long started her career as a local government and political beat reporter for the Daily Tribune in Cartersville, Georgia. It was there that Long continued to grow her skillset, by “writing such scintillating stories as the mayoral race that ended in a tie four times,” Long said. “The only reason anybody won was because somebody had to go to the hospital and couldn’t vote, so the mayor won by one vote.”
Reporting on local government and politics gave Long a strong background in public relations. She said it also allowed her to learn more about how the government works in addition to learning about writing for different audiences.
These experiences helped Long get a job working for a city government near Atlanta. The new job also included running the city’s social media accounts. Taking on this new responsibility spurred Long into going back to school to learn more about communicating in the digital age and using social media professionally.
After earning a Master of Arts in Public Relations from Ball State University in 2020, where she studied PR and journalism, Long continued her work in city government.
Soon she began to think about getting a job in higher education again.
Though Long has worked for both local governments and higher education institutions, she does have a preference. “I like higher education because I will walk up at commencement and someone says, ‘I came here because I saw an article in the newspaper,’ or, ‘I read something online,’ or, ‘I saw an ad,’ or, ‘my mom saw an ad and kept putting it in front of my face,’ and I can see the change in someone from
the beginning to end,” Long said.
Bored one day, scrolling through jobs during a city council meeting, she found a job opening at LCC that caught her eye. “It had two things I liked – higher education, and the Pacific Northwest,” Long said. She had visited Oregon before and knew she liked the area.
A couple of months after applying, Long was offered the job. After packing everything she could fit in her car and two suitcases, she moved cross-country to start a new chapter in Eugene.
‘If you want to be inspired, sit down and listen to a student.’
As the director of Marketing and Strategic Communications at LCC, Long’s job is all about showing what Lane has to offer, as well as making sure communications from the college to current and prospective students are consistent across all platforms.
“Digital advertising is the majority of what we do,” Long said. Long coordinates the filming of LCC commercials and photo shoots with an advertising firm, meeting with them every other week.
LCC has three main categories of media and marketing methods: paid, owned, and earned. “Paid” includes things like commercials that are filmed by the advertising firm. The “owned” category includes LCC’s social media, email accounts, and website.The “earned” category is where Long or her boss writes a press release about something newsworthy going on at LCC and sends it out to local media outlets in hopes that they want to do a story on it.
“That’s my true love of my job, is being able to do that,” Long said, “Because I love people being able to see it, and it always means something even better when somebody else says it about Lane instead of Lane says it about themselves.”
When a new or prospective student interacts with Lane, many channels of communication may be used – such as email, text, LCC’s website, and social media accounts — and part of Long’s job is to make sure that all communications going out are correct and consistent with one another.
While other team members manage the social media accounts and website, Long is responsible for ensuring the communications going out through these channels all say the same thing and that the branding is consistent.
In addition to communications going out from the main channels to students, Long also directs the PR campaigns for LCC. “I did earn my accreditation in public relations, referred to as the APR,” Long said, “It’s been a goal for most of my career, and I decided in 2023 that it was time to quit putting it off.”
“In the past few months,” Long said, “I have been working with a videographer and crew to capture some stories about the students, faculty, and staff at LCC and how their efforts are transforming lives.”
Long is entering another PR campaign in the Anvil Awards this year. This time with a campaign that “we actually spent money on,” Long said. It’s a campaign created for the new Bachelor of Applied Science and Business offered at LCC. Long said they got some national news coverage and had more advertising for it than the project that won second place last year, so there are hopes of another win in the future.
Regardless of the outcome of the 2025 Anvil Awards, Long will be continuing her work for LCC, motivated by the people and ideas at the heart of the school.
“I have studied writing and communication my entire life. Now I’m studying computers to meld the two together and understand that user experience,” Long said she has been taking computer science classes at LCC. Though she is taking this term off from classes, her hope is to continue to study programming and computer science “to understand how it can intersect with marketing and public relations to automate, simplify, and expand some processes.”
“For example there are a handful of companies that sell data scraping services to monitor news and social media mentions of their customers,” Long clarified in an email to The Torch. “These services are extremely robust, not always that accurate, and very expensive. I have thought about how to improve them and make them more cost effective. With the right skillset, I think I could make a better product.”
“There are opportunities to grow around every corner. Maybe that’s a degree, maybe that’s a class to build your skills, maybe that’s an opportunity to take on a leadership role with student organizations, try something new, or enhance what you’re already doing,” Long said. “I don’t have a background in computers, so I’m picking that up. So it doesn’t matter your age, or your background, or any of that. If you want to be inspired, sit down and listen to a student.”
Have a staff or faculty member you think we should feature? Reach out to us at torcheditor@lanecc.edu
