Tonya Oaks Smith, director of communications at the UALR William H. Bowen School of Law, delivered a presentation on communicating during a crisis, “We’re Going to Need a Bigger Boat,” to a standing room only crowd at Penn State University June 12.

Her presentation took its theoretical basis from the book, “Effective Crisis Communication” by UALR Professor Robert Ulmer, the University of Kentucky’s Professor Tim Sellnow, and Wayne State’s Professor Matt Seeger, and applied the authors’ work to web communication during a crisis.

The Web 2012 Conference is an annual event for web communication professionals. The conference was “sold out” six weeks prior to the event. Her slide show is being featured on Slideshare and has already had more than 2,100 views.

It was also featured in Friday Five. Her presentation was repeated on June 25 at the 2012 HighEdWeb New York Regional Conference in Syracuse, N.Y.

Smith, who has a bachelor’s degree in English from Louisiana State University and a master’s degree in applied communication studies from UALR, has lectured at seven higher education web conferences during the past year. On Oct. 8, she will present “There’s life beyond the four-year university,” with co-presenters Aaron Rester and Shari Erwin, another UALR alum, at the 2012 HighEdWeb Association Conference in Milwaukee, Wis.