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SU students featured on new billboards
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One of Shippensburg University’s new billboards is seen along Interstate 81. (Jason Malmont/The Sentinel)
Andrew Blass doesn’t think he’s heard the end of the teasing. He’s one of the faces of Shippensburg University now, and a photo of him is featured on a billboard along Interstate 81 between Newville and Shippensburg.
“Nobody says, ‘How are you doing?’ They say, ‘You’re on a billboard,’” Blass said.
Various students are featured on the billboards and on the SU Web site. The marketing campaign is based on various words with “ship” suffixes, such as leadership, internship, friendship and scholarship.
Blass is a graduate of Cumberland Valley High School and a junior at SU. He’s been on the dean’s list consistently and is the face of “scholarship,” but he’s better known in Shippensburg for his community service.
Active volunteer
Blass is active in Circle K, the college club affiliated with the Kiwanis Club, and he comes to most of the 7 a.m. meetings in downtown Shippensburg.
“For a student, that’s phenomenal,” said Joe Cretella, a Kiwanis member and a former dean of admissions at the university.
Blass is the district service chairman for Circle K. He is also president-elect of the club.
As a result of Blass’s “leadership and enthusiasm, many more students participate now” in community service activities, Cretella said.
One of the places Circle K members volunteer is the King’s Kettle food pantry. J.R. Wells of King’s Kettle said the Circle K members show up for distribution days regularly whenever SU is in session.
“I think he’s a great guy,” Wells said. “Circle K has been very helpful. They have been very faithful.”
Blass is described as an exercise science major on the SU Web site, but he says his volunteer work has changed his career focus somewhat and he’s adding a second major.
Education interest
In addition to Circle K activities and working at the Carlisle Family YWCA, Blass has been volunteering as a tutor. He’s decided to major in secondary education in biology, which will add about a year to his undergraduate education.
Blass, the son of Dale and Susan Blass of Silver Spring Township, played football and ice hockey in high school and saw a lot of physical therapists after injuries. He became interested in physical therapy as a career, so he’s been majoring in exercise science and minoring in coaching.
He still plans on completing those programs, but he is adding the secondary education studies because tutoring helped him realize he enjoys teaching and working with young people.
His interest in coaching and teaching fit together well, Blass said: “Those are the kind of things I enjoy.”
But Blass never expected to be part of a marketing program. He didn’t know any of the other students who were asked to represent the university until later.
Agreed to help
“They just called me one day and I decided I’d do it,” Blass said. He was told to come prepared to have his photo taken. “I didn’t really know it was going to be on a billboard until I got there.”
Cretella approves of the billboard campaign.
“I pushed for years and couldn’t get them,” he says.
He said the billboard advertising the marching band at Indiana University of Pennsylvania was always a favorite topic when deans of admission in the State System of Higher Education got together.
“These are great kids,” said Pete Gigliotti, executive director for university communications and marketing.
The campaign
There are SU billboards rotating through various locations in the Harrisburg-to-Hagerstown corridor, Gigliotti said. There are also billboards on the eastbound and westbound lanes of the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Eventually SU will market outside the immediate region. There are more and more students coming to the university from Berks, Lebanon and Bucks counties, Gigliotti said. Future campaigns may target those regions.
When someone in south-central Pennsylvania says “the university,” SU officials want that university to be Shippensburg University, Gigliotti said. The marketing campaign is intended to promote SU, but also to remind people in the region about their local university and to help attract future students.
Blass is coping with being well known on campus.
“It’s kind of exciting,” he said.
