Public Relations at Hofstra University

My professional background began working at ABC News in the production side for their national news service. From there, I slowly move into Public Relations, working with the NASDAQ market site where I was able to utilize my broadcasting skill by using a format where I was able to work with special events and dealing with NASDAQ clients who wanted to utilize a broadcast facility. Teaching Public Relations at Hofstra has been a very rewarding experience. Throughout the time that I have been here; I have been teaching for about 4 years now, I have seen a change in the way the media is affecting Public Relations. It has gone from more of the traditional set of Public Relations to more digital and I am now trying to incorporate that more for my students to be current with what’s going on in the industry. Our Public Relations program is perfect for students who are interested in the field of media. Perhaps they are not quite sure if they want to go into journalism or media studies or even public relations, as our department offers all three areas, but if the students who would excel in Public Relations need to be students who enjoy the media, want to understand how the media works and also need to have the personality of a go-getter. Someone that always is going to do what it takes to get the job done. Public Relations community in the School of Communication is a close-knit community. It is a community where all the students get to know each other because of our small class sizes and because of P.R.S.S.A., they really get to know each other more on a one to one basis. Also the way P.R. works is it’s a lot of brainstorming, a lot of team effort and that is mimicked in the classroom so that students are consistently working on small projects in the classroom to understand the new concept being taught and they really get to know each other inside the classroom and then outside they do socialize with P.S.S.R.A. and through internships. Internships allow students to compare and contrast what’s going on at their internships and they might take the train into the city together and get to know each other outside the classroom as well. So it’s a really tight-knit community and everyone seems to have a friend on the P.R. track. Students really learn to A) know the media. In P.R., you are as good as the media that you know so in Public Relations, there are a lot of interpersonal communication skills obviously but more importantly the student needs to know their media landscape. They need to know who they are pitching their stories to. They need to know how to position clients. So students really need to have a well-rounded education in understanding fundamentals of Public Relations but mostly, how those fundamentals of Public Relations exist in a media environment. Students, as much as they are a generation that is involved in digital media, it is new to look at digital media from a working standpoint. They have fun with it, they socialize with it but now there’s a change to taking the fun from digital media and actually seeing the business applications to it. Students are hesitant at first because it’s a new world and as they get involved though, they see what possibilities are there in digital media and how they can use this for their career. Internships here at Hofstra are important because students receive a wonderful education in the classroom but, this is especially in the media, you need to go out there and actually do it. So they can take what they learned in the classroom and then apply it to the real world experience and especially in P.R., you need to, when you graduate, you need to have some internships under your belt. Employers look to see that you’ve actually gone out there and done the work they require. So an internship gives students that competitive edge to get that first job. A good example of out industry partnerships in our current partnership with the MS&L, Manning, Savage, and Lee Agency in New York City. They are a worldwide public relations agency that currently we have about five students working with them hand on doing independent study to learn what is going on in the digital media landscape. They are working on presentations to bring to the clients about actual campaigns they would really develop for MS&L clients utilizing this new digital media spectrum. We do have a very active chapter of P.S.S.R.A.. We have a large membership, P.S.S.R.A. continuously grows. We also recently developed in the last year a working agency within P.S.S.R.A. that’s called Prestige Agency and P.S.S.R.A. AND Prestige work hand in hand and they have done a lot of community outreach by doing a lot of campaigns for local non-profit clients, as well as establishing events on campus, letting members gets hand on experience doing planning and media out-reach to gain publicity both on campus and outside of campus to get people to see what Public Relations is all about. To learn more about the major and more about the career in general. We are providing our students with a digital media curriculum which is current with what is happening in the industry and as a school of Journalism, Media Studies and Public Relations, we need to make sure we stay with the trends and so this curriculum is giving students the most up to date curriculum with what is happening in digital media.