During a sleepless night Karen Russell of the University of Georgia - Grady College had a Jerry Maguire moment. She thought about how they were teaching PR and what could be done to improve it....then she wrote up a manifesto and e-mailed all the faculty. When looking at the PR curriculum Karen said:
It's virtually the same as it was 10 years ago, with the exception of an additional requirement for a research class.How many other programs are stuck in the 90's? or perhaps even the 80's? There are always cases of students being a bit more technologically advanced than the faculty, but within PR this is a huge issue since technology is driving many of the changes we're seeing.Of course, individually we've changed the way we teach. Adding blogging, for instance, to the PR writing class is something I did for the first time last semester. But who says a PR writing class is necessary, or sufficient?
So I e-mailed a manifesto to my colleagues suggesting that we toss everything out and build a new curriculum from scratch.
I encourage you to visit Karen's Teaching PR blog and leave a comment. What do you think the PR curriculum of today and tomorrow should cover?
Earlier I blogged about how students were asking why they weren't learning about some of the new tools and trends.
Visitor Comments
Great post Josh. Educate---you've got to educate before you can sell. You don't need a protégé do you?
Posted by: Justin William Hunt | April 14, 2006 11:40 PM
If you get a copy of her manifesto, let us know.
Posted by: Greg Hoffman | April 18, 2006 8:57 AM
so they have the same problem... there is too much old information. and even so... if there were some new info, it's still 2-3 years old.
Posted by: moma | April 18, 2007 2:41 AM