Abstract:
Universities, as educational institutions, play a vital role in the development and
improvement of the society, contributing to the welfare of citizens considering the social
responsibility of universities with a large number of stakeholders (students, institutions,
government, employees, companies, and local community).The purpose of this study was to
assess public relations practitioners’ role in the practices of organizational university social
responsibility: Wolaita Sodo University in focus. The study employed explanatory research
design and used mixed research methods. Purposive sampling technique was used to select
the participants for the study. This study also used both primary and secondary sources of
data. The data was gathered through questionnaire, interview and document analysis. The
qualitative data were analyzed thematically while the quantitative data were analyzed using
descriptive statistics. Findings showed that public relations practitioners holds crucial role in
building and creating the two-way relationship between the university and the society. It also
showed that several challenges like negative publicity from different media, releasing fake
news, and damaging reputation of the organization by associating with wrong information
have been affecting the practice of university social responsibility. Based on this, it is
recommended that the Public relations department, communication and public relation
directorate of the University need to establish a mutual relationship with their communities
and try as much as possible to work closely with management to provide even more
corporate social responsibility programs for the society
