Teaching PR

My spring 2007 Campaigns team for the UGA Department of Intercultural Affairs will be pleased to learn that all the faculty received in their mailboxes today a calendar of events for the year--with that troublesome logo and "I Am Intercultural" theme front and center. Lauren, Christy, Jamie, Charlotte, Mezelle, Allie and Kerri: all that hard work is finally paying off!

Labels: campaigns, diversity

On Monday, my third team presented to their client, the UGA Department of Intercultural Affairs. This client presented quite a challenge in that they asked the team to come up with a way to get more students, especially white students, involved in ICA events. The team struggled at times -- among other things they had to completely redesign their logo after both the client and a student focus group disliked their first attempt -- but came on strong at the end. The client liked not only the new logo, but also the 3-day event the team planned and their theme, "I Am Intercultural," which points out that everyone is intercultural in some way and therefore can and should be involved in ICA events.

Anyone who knows me knows that diversity is an issue near and dear to my heart, so I really wanted the team to come up with something the department would want to use. And they did. Great job, ICA team!

You can also read what Charlotte and Mezelle had to say about it.

Labels: campaigns, diversity, students

This semester my Campaigns class is chock-full of students interested in sports. Quite a few blog posts have talked about sports PR, publicity, or crises, and several of the students have worked or are working with sports team--good positions, too, with the Atlanta Falcons and the UGA Athletic Department, for example. I find this curious, because UGA does have a sports promotion program, yet the students chose to major in PR.

I’m not complaining, though. If I subtract from 30 students the five who are primarily interested in sports information, my class would consist of 25 students: 24 women... and one guy. And he, by the way, is going to law school next fall.

Think about that for a minute: none of the male students in my class are PR generalists.

A quick search of a Bureau of Labor Statistics (May 2005) report showed there are over 190,000 PR specialists and over 43,000 PR managers. Secondary sources indicate that 65% of PR practitioners were female in 1997 and 67% in 2002, so by now we must be up around 70%.

Obviously I'm not the only blogger to have commented on this. Last year Marcel Goldstein speculated on some reasons men don't go into PR, and PR educator Bill Sledzik has gone so far as to advocate scholarships dedicated to men to encourage them to consider PR as a major. From what Bill says, my 1:5 male-to-female student ratio is actually not bad, compared to 1:9 at Kent and in the PRSSA.

But I haven't heard anyone else talking about male students being almost uniformly interested in sports. If my students are any indication, it won’t be long until the only men left in PR are in sports information.

Labels: diversity, sports, students