Senior PR major earns EcoCAR Challenge fellowship

Senior PR major earns EcoCAR Challenge fellowship

Dana Bubonovich.

A senior public relations major at Penn State has earned a fellowship worth more than $15,000, which was awarded to her to supervise public relations for the Penn State team in the nationwide EcoCAR Challenge.

Dana Bubonovich of Pittsburgh earned the EcoCAR Outreach Fellowship because of her outstanding work with the project during the past year.

As outreach coordinator for the project at Penn State, Bubonovich is responsible for all social media, media relations, event planning and awareness of the competition related to the University’s involvement. Her work with social networking helped Penn State win the “Best Social Networking Award” at the EcoCAR: Year One Finals in June.

The EcoCAR competition, sponsored by General Motors and the Department of Energy, challenges university engineering students across North America to re-engineer a 2009 Saturn VUE, with goals to improve fuel efficiency and reduce emissions while retaining the vehicle’s performance and consumer appeal.

Bubonovich has worked as part of the EcoCAR team at Penn State since January. She also serves as president of the Lawrence G. Foster Chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America, an active group of students majoring in public relations in the College of Communications.

After graduation, she plans to pursue a career in alternative energy.