Teaching PR

"Strategies to Attract and Keep Diverse Students and Faculty"

Yup, it's another weeks-old AEJMC panel to discuss. (Better late than never, I hope.) This one was hosted by the Commission on the Status of Women and the Public Relations Division, and it featured, in addition to moderator Judy VanSlyke Turk of Virginia Commonwealth:

• Lauri Grunig, Maryland
• Hayg Oshagan, Wayne State
• Elizabeth L. Toth, Maryland
• Brenda Wrigley, Syracuse
• Fritz Cropp, Missouri

First, Elizabeth Toth discussed different ways of defining or thinking about diversity.

• Diversity as demographics like race and gender, but also things like class, language, income, etc.
• Diversity as social identities, which includes personal identities (avowed) and others' characterizations (ascribed).
• Cultural distinctions-- norms, values, styles, patterns of thinking, transmitted over generations
• Diversity as a commitment--not just laws but eithics such as equity, representativeness
• Diversity as social action--recognizing points of tension, such as generational differences

Diversity's meaning is evolving. It's becoming watered down to the point that everyone has their own special interest group. A better approach might be awareness and sensitivity to difference and seeking linkages across differences.

Hayg Oshagan called for a pragmatic approach, arguing that the single most important factor in attracting and keeping diverse faculty and students is focusing on social support and mentoring. Create a place where people can meet and see each other; hire a diversity officer who will push the agenda forward. He also pointed out that in 2007-08, only 5% of AEJMC officers and presenters were African-American, Hispanic, and Native American (combined).

Brenda Wrigley spoke about the undergraduate program. The first step is personalizing the process -- all admitted students (regardless of demographics) get some form of personal contact from her school's diversity officer (phone, social media, etc.). Next they have an ambassadors program where students adopt 3 other students to help build group identity. Third, they follow up with people who were admitted but didn't attend to ask why, what factors led to their decision. They build partnerships, such as with the Jackie Robinson Foundation, for money. They held a diversity essay competition, and 15 students were invited to visit campus for 2-3 days, go to a basketball game, visit classes, etc. Finally, they have a Professional in Residence program, where invited professionals can teach diversity classes and represent diversity by being role models.

Fritz Cropp provided an international perspective in his discussion. By training diverse Ph.D. students, we are preparing diverse faculties of the future. Sending students abroad and bringing undergrads from other countries in; Visiting Professionals and Visiting Scholars programs can help to introduce diversity of thought. Finally, his school is setting up satellite campuses in other countries.

Lauri Grunig talked about what we can do when we don't have as much money as we'd like to implement diversity programs. Validation -- giving students a voice; mentoring and advising; hiring faculty who can be role models especially for first generation college students. She also pointed out that all professors help to create the environment. Diversity of thought is the next frontier for public relations, but we haven't even achieved the first level yet. Institutional culture is the most important factor in hiring and retention of minority faculty. Other points:

• Maintain focus on important diversity initiatives.
• Promote greater interaction of people.
• Remain wary of imposing values and practices of the dominant group.
• Inspire a sense of common purpose.
• Explore the range of acceptable and desirable behaviors.

Diversity excuses debunked

I'm a bit behind on my reading, but I just finished an article that I think is very worthwhile. It's a book excerpt from Joe Watson, Without Excuses: Unleash the Power of Diversity to Build Your Business, published in Black Enterprise's November 2006 issue (for some reason it's not in their archive yet).

Here are some of the common "excuses for diversity failures":
1. "We can't find any."
2. "Our search firms didn't bring us a diverse slate."
3. "Diversity candidates just don't make it through the hiring process."
4. "Diversity doesn't affect us."
5. "Diverse professionals don't want to work here--there is no one here like them."
6. "We don't have the resources."
7. "We hired a diverse senior executive, but that hasn't moved the numbers at all."
8. "Our hiring managers won't cooperate."
9. "We only promote from within."
10. "We made a mistake by promoting a lot of minorities too soon, before they were ready."
11. "We did diversity training and nothing happened."
12. "We don't have the time or resources to train a bunch of new people."

Neither Watson nor I have any patience for these statements. Do more and better research. Fire the search firm and hire a more effective one. Offer the candidate more money. Tie hiring managers' compensation to achievements in diversity hiring. And so forth. "Once you've stripped away your disabling excuses," Watson writes, "you'll be ready to move on to building a productive, successful diversity recruiting program, and growing your business." Good advice for anyone, whether in academics or in the practice.

A challenge for PR grad students

Last week I confirmed with the second client for next semester's PR Campaigns class: I have seven graduate students enrolled so I have decided to challenge them with working on the always controversial issue of intercultural communications. The team will work with UGA's Office of Intercultural Affairs to develop a campaign along the line of this one from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (my alma mater) and this one from the University of Michigan (not my alma mater, but vastly preferred over Ohio State when it comes to football).

I came across the two campaigns in my research for UGA's Task Force on Graduate Education -- I am chairing the Inclusiveness work group -- during the benchmarking phase of our work. I can't wait to see what my students come up with.

Labels: campaigns, students

Teaching multicultural PR

Just finished reading Donnalyn Pompper's 2005 article on "Multiculturalism in the Public Relations Curriculum," for which she held focus groups with African-American women to find out what they thought about how multiculturalism is taught in PR classes.

"Topic guide probes regarding classroom attention to multicultural diversity met spontaneous laughter in each of the four cities, indicating that virtually no respondents had public relations classes that covered multicultural diversity in any way," she reported.

A list of a number of some suggestions the women made to improve teaching of diversity:

1. Hire more full-time faculty of color
2. Reach out to high-school students
3. Workshops or training sessions for faculty
4. Field trips to minority-owned agencies and guest lectures
5. Use multicultural cases and clients in class
6. Revise textbooks to include pictures/case studies involving ethnic groups
7. Teach business negotiation skills and interpersonal persuasion strategies for dealing with office politics
8. Ask PRSA and NBPRS to provide internships and mentoring

I think we're doing pretty well at UGA-- we maintain a list of multicultural project assignments, guest speakers, graduate student and faculty research, and campaigns clients that belies Pompper's conclusion-- but undoubtedly we can do more.

Item #1 is of particular concern. Of our 9 full-time PR faculty, only one is classified as a minority. Last year, when I chaired our search committee to find a new assistant professor, I made sure that we made a special effort to recruit minority candidates, right down to writing personal letters and contacting advisors to identify candidates, yet in the end there were very few qualified minority applicants. Obviously as a field we need to do a better job of recruiting minority graduate students to earn Ph.D.s and get out there and teach.

In the meantime, I really latched onto one thing Pompper's focus group members mentioned: the importance to several participants of African-American adjunct instructors. I intend to find out if we can tap into this market as a way of bringing diversity to our department.

Diversity and difference

This month's PRecedent (the newsletter for UGA's PRSSA chapter) contains a really interesting article on diversity in public relations-- or maybe I should say really infuriating.

The article is by PR/Sociology major Geneva Greene, whom I do not know, and it makes the point that diversity should include more than just race but gender, sexual orientation, and so on. Even with a broad definition, the PR industry is not very diverse. The story goes on to cite various industry commissions and committees that have been set up to address this issue.

What infuriated me were the insights provided by a couple of recent Grady grads, both African-American. According to Ms. Greene, one of them was advised to use her middle name "because it was less ethnic," and the other felt he must cut off his braids in order to "conform to the mainstream professional image." She makes the point that even though minority employees are valued for the insights and skills they can bring, "distinctions" in name and appearance "are not welcome."

PR will never be diverse as long as young, talented people feel unwelcome to be different.