The Schieffer School of Journalism is developing a student agency for strategic communication majors that will provide students internship experience with real world perspective, the agency’s public relations manager Meghan Chamberlin said.

Julie O’Neil, associate professor at the Schieffer School, said the agency, which will have a full-time faculty position, received initial support from Burlington Northern Santa Fe and the BNSF Railway Foundation.

Margaret Ritsch, interim director of the program, said the student-driven agency is called Roxo, which means “purple” in Portuguese.

The name was chosen from more than 100 choices that were reviewed by four focus groups, Ritsch said. She added that an online survey of strategic communication students also was conducted.

The agency will be on the second floor of Moudy South. The tentative plans include a reception area, conference tables and a computer lab among other amenities, Ritsch said.

Chamberlin, a senior strategic communication major, said students are competing for 15 internships during the fall 2012 semester. The recruitment process has closed and the agency is reviewing its potential candidates, she said.

Students can receive up to three one-hour elective credits for their involvement with Roxo, Chamberlin said.

Ritsch said the interns will provide comprehensive services for their clients, including digital and interactive work, such as designing websites and social media campaigns.

MY RIDE: Keeping You Mobile and the Boys and Girls Club are two nonprofit organizations that have begun working with the agency, Ritsch said.

Chamberlin said that on Wednesday, students made their first presentation to the director of marketing of the Boys and Girls Club in which they proposed improvements for the organization’s website and public relations aspects.

Roxo will connect an art director, copy writer, public relations manager, account executive and digital experts to each client, Chamberlin said.

“The hands-on experience and real client interaction and feedback is priceless,” said Dick Russack, a retired BNSF communications executive who oversaw the planning task force for the agency. “It complements and helps translate classroom reading and discussion into a tangible portfolio of real work.”

Ali Kassam, an account executive for the agency and a senior strategic communication major, said getting involved in Roxo could act as a springboard in launching a career in the strategic communications field.

Ritsch said an internship at the agency could be beneficial to students’ work samples and work experience.

“Roxo will provide an opportunity for the students to produce thoughtful, high quality work for their portfolios and will equip students with habits of professionalism,” she said.

College of Communications Dean David Whillock stated in a press release the new faculty position brings expertise in agency work and creates an “avenue for our students to have first-hand knowledge of how to take an idea into the actual presentation of material.”

O’Neil said that in the past, the Schieffer School experimented with the idea of an agency called RealWorld, but there was only enough money for three years of operation and the agency closed, she said.

After realizing how beneficial the agency was in terms of students’ learning processes, O’Neil, Russack and the task force began developing a plan to create a more comprehensive agency that would be more closely tied to the curriculum, she said.

O’Neil and a task force of professors, community members and strategic communication students created a mission statement and presented a seven-page proposal to Provost Nowell Donovan in 2011, which led to the approval of the developing agency, O’Neil said.

Chamberlin said she believed the addition of the program as a comprehensive learning experience could attract more incoming first-year students into the major as well as make TCU’s program stand out.

“At Roxo, the students discover and create their own resources, implement plans and think on their feet,” Chamberlin said.

O’Neil said that when students are placed into external internships, agencies focus on how the intern can help them, not how they can help the intern. Roxo would strive to provide real work experience for the students by making it a student-driven project, she said.

Construction of the agency on the second floor of Moudy South is tentatively scheduled to begin in summer 2012, and Roxo will be open in time for the 2012-13 academic year.