Articles

How to Maintain Your APR Credentials

Robert E. Sheldon, APR, Fellow PRSA
Accreditation Chair

Earning your APR is a great accomplishment that identifies you as a consummate professional in public relations. During your months of study in preparation for the Readiness Review Panel and the online APR test, you’ve accumulated a wealth of knowledge about how to practice the profession.  PRSA recognizes the importance of keeping that knowledge up to date and adding to your skills as time goes on. To that end, PRSA has created the APR Renewal process.

What is APR Renewal?

Every three years after earning your APR, members must apply to renew their APR by earning a minimum of 15 continuing education units (CEUs) through various professional development and service activities. In many cases, simply by being active in your PRSA Chapter or your community, and by attending workshops and seminars one would normally encounter, accumulating the necessary CEUs is not difficult.  Here are the broad categories for accumulating CEUs:

• Professional Development – including seminars, college programs, giving presentations or speeches, publishing a book, authoring articles or blogs.
• Ethics Training – attending an Ethics in Public Relations training session (required).
• Professional Activities – included being a national PRSA officer, local chapter officer, board member or committee chair or being a Del Oro judge. Also, being a mentor, presenter at an APR study class or being accreditation chair.
• Public Service – Based on the number of volunteer hours (10 to 50 hours over three years), you can earn CEUs for pro bono public relations service to local/national community organizations.
  
  

Detailed descriptions of the eligible CEUs and the APR renewal process can be found on prsa.org.  In the meantime, if you have questions regarding any part of the APR process, please contact me at [email protected]