No one (with the possible exception of Mr. Huey) would dispute that the ideal PR professor is someone who has both professional experience and a Ph.D. from a school that's strong on theory and research. However, not very many of those people exist. At the University of Georgia, we're fortunate to have several -- including Lynne Sallot, with 14 years professional experience, and Kaye Trammell, who continues to serve in public affairs as an officer in the Navy Reserve. I am the first to admit that they have a better grasp of the practice than do I, with only minimal experience while I was in grad school. But even I found that it doesn't take long before what you did as a practitioner morphs into something else or even loses its relevancy. How does that newsletter I helped write and edit 15 years ago, on a typewriter for God's sake, really serve my students?
Sometime ago Todd Defren posted on fixing undergraduate PR programs, emphasizing the role PR institutions could take. I would like to add to his list by suggesting that public relations needs an internship program for faculty along the lines of that offered by the Advertising Educational Foundation. I've made efforts to keep up with changes in the field primarily by reading about it and by keeping in touch with former students. A couple of weeks visiting an agency or corporation, sitting in on meetings, listening and learning, maybe even writing a news release or two (assuming they are not, in fact, dead) would without doubt benefit me and, more importantly, my students.
Rather than spewing anti-intellectual invective, let's do something constructive to build the kind of faculty that are most needed.
Labels: education, faculty internships, graduate programs
