Educators are the unsung heroes of society. They prepare students for the workforce; instill in them lifelong lessons; and balance instruction, advising, and administrative duties. The following four UREP professors have proven their dedication to students as well as to the advancement of public relations pedagogy and practice.
Dr. Carolina Acosta-Alzuru
Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, Professor of Public Relations in the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia (UGA), is an advocate for cultural inclusiveness with an unyielding dedication to student success.
A native of Caracas, Venezuela, Acosta-Alzuru’s parents facilitated several opportunities for her intellectual growth. She was always surrounded by books, which she read voraciously and was encouraged to take developmental courses. Her parents extended their support by participating in events with her, as she has fond memories of taking language courses at the French Institute Alliance with her father.
In school, Acosta-Alzuru recalls questioning an assignment grade, to which her teacher responded, “you can’t write.” This experience resulted in her focusing on less subjective subjects, and she pursued a career in computer science. With a scholarship from the Venezuelan government, Acosta-Alzuru took advantage of an opportunity to finish her undergraduate degree in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. After completing her degree, she returned to Venezuela to work as a computer programming manager.
While working full time, she accepted an invitation to teach a computer science course in the Escuela de Comunicación Social, Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (School of Social Communication at Andres Bello Catholic University). This experience led to three realizations that changed the course of her career. First, education was immediately captivating. “In the first 30 minutes in the classroom I realized I wanted to teach” C. Acosta-Alzuru, personal communication, December 22, 2020). Her time at the school uncovered her second realization—her interest was shifting from computers to communication. She was exposed to public relations theory and related courses through her students’ studies and decided to return to the United States with her family to pursue graduate education in mass communication.
She enrolled in the nonthesis master’s track of her program at the UGA and with her computer science degree, was awarded a graduate assistantship with the department as the information technology Help Desk clerk. Her final realization, through encouragement from her professors, was that she excelled in research. Her instructors were puzzled as to why she did not enroll in the thesis-track, convinced her to change tracks and persisted that she remain at UGA to receive her doctoral degree in mass communication. Continuing to be impressed with her academic and research prowess, the faculty hired her in 1999 as an assistant professor, the first doctoral student to continue in the college in a tenure-track position.
An authority on telenovelas, Acosta-Alzuru’s research passion is cultural studies. What she does not devote to public relations scholarship, she shifts to her teaching. Public Relations Campaigns and Public Relations Management are courses she regularly teaches and has updated the curriculum to include financial links to public relations practice. Students in her courses learn about the stock market, economic indicators, and other skills they will need in agency employment.
Her efforts in the classroom have not gone unnoticed. She’s received UGA universitywide honors, the Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professorship, given to those with significant contributions to graduate and/or undergraduate instruction, and the 2002–2003 Richard B. Russell Award for excellence in undergraduate teaching. In 2015, she was awarded the Scripps Howard/AEJMC Journalism and Mass Communication Teacher of the Year, a national award recognizing excellence in teaching and administration within journalism and communication programs. She received a Fulbright Specialist Grant in 2015 to teach at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, Chile.
Dr. Rochelle Ford
Rochelle Ford, eighth president of Dillard University, is a thought leader in DE and I practice and policy. Ford’s work has earned her national accolades since her time as an undergraduate at Howard University where she was nominated for and won the Public Relations Student Society of America’s (PRSSA) Betsy L. Plank Award, the top student award at that time. Since then, she has received numerous other honors, including the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s (AEJMC) 2018 Lionel C. Barrow Jr. Award for Distinguished Achievement in Diversity Research and Education. She was inducted into the PRSSA Hall of Fame in 2000, and was a 2014 Arthur W. Page Society Inductee in 2014. In September 2021, she received the Page Society’s Distinguished Service Award for her work in DE&I.
Ford’s experience in communication began in middle school where she was selected to be a student journalist for the local ABC affiliate. She participated in the Scholastic Journalism Program and served as the managing editor of her high-school newspaper, but it was her experience on the student council that cemented the discipline as a career aspiration, “I loved making the news. I loved solving problems, working with the school board, creating change, and I wondered how I could combine all those interests” (R. Ford, personal communication, December 16, 2020). Taking her father’s advice, she majored in public relations and journalism on a full academic scholarship from Howard.
Ford gained tremendous practical experience while enrolled at Howard, which honed her skills and solidified her interest in working in the field. Throughout college, she completed summer internships at Nationwide Insurance, working in copy editing, community relations, and internal communication. During the spring semester of her sophomore year, she interned at the Washington, DC, office of Ketchum Public Relations and would go on to intern at the AARP local office, AFLCIO, and Arthur Schultz & Co, a boutique public relations firm in DC.
Ford credits former Ketchum Public Relations executive Dave Drobis and Public Relations professional Ofield Dukes for manifesting her positions with Ketchum and Arthur Schultz & Co, respectively. After joining the PRSSA, she attended its national conference in New York City and went to a session facilitated by Drobis. There, she inquired about Ketchum’s diversity efforts and gave him her resume for review. Not only did he review it, but he forwarded her resume to the DC office, and she was given the spring internship at his behest. She often uses this experience to illustrate to her students how being present and engaged at professional events can yield significant results.
She received her senior year internship with boutique agency Arthur Schultz & Co. after meeting the Black Public Relations Society of Washington founder Ofield Dukes, who would serve as a mentor to Ford. In addition to the Arthur Schultz & Co. internship, his mentoring garnered her experiences in government, including working for President Bill Clinton’s Inauguration and Transition team.
Ford’s choice to attend Howard University as an undergraduate also proved beneficial. She was provided opportunities to meet journalism luminaries such as Ted Coppel and Peter Jennings. She was also proud to be a student at what she calls the “Mecca,” which boasts former New York City mayor David Dinkins, Radio One founder Cathy Hughes, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, and a host of other Black professionals as alumni. Howard is also where she met Professor Barbara Hines, her long-time mentor, who has made an immeasurable impact on her career. She credits Hines for facilitating her engagement with public relations pioneers such as Debbie Miller, Marilyn Kern-Foxworth, and Ken Carter.
According to its website, Howard’s commitment “to the study of disadvantaged persons in American society and throughout the world” (“History” n.d., ¶ 2) is woven throughout its curriculum and passed on to its students. Ford continued this tradition, but chose to study a demographic other than ethnically underrepresented. She notes, “I didn’t want to be pigeonholed into doing race-related projects” (R. Ford 2020). Ford was hired full time by the AARP after graduation and used the skills she employed there to inform her study at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) on the changing demographics with a concentration on senior citizens. She was one of the first scholars to introduce gerontology to the study of situational theory of problem-solving.
Ford sought to continue her research in the situational theory of publics in her doctoral program at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, but would-be advisors who were experts in the field retired, resulting in a research pivot to diversity. Dr. Don Jugenheimer suggested that she study African Americans in public relations. She has since built her career on public relations and related topics.
Tenured at three universities—Howard, Syracuse, and Elon, and also holding administrative positions at each, Ford did not take the traditional research route to tenure and promotion. She published primarily in trade periodicals instead of academic journals after becoming disenchanted with the process, particularly reviewers’ misunderstanding of her research. She notes, “I wanted to draw outside of the box. I rejected the notion of publishing in traditional academic journals. I would take all the literature and studies and things being done and I would translate it and put it into PR tactics and practitioners were using it and quoting it and it was changing the practice, even though I hadn’t written a refereed article” (Ford 2020).
Ford’s method, unpopular among many academics, made her work widely recognized outside the academy. Much of her public scholarship is published in O’Dwyer’s Newsletter, New York Times, and Public Relations Tactics, but she does caution future generation scholars against taking this route. She notes it was feasible to advance in the academy with her notoriety among practitioners while she was a junior faculty member, but this was due to the lack of DE and I research at the time. She encourages others to contribute to the academy so that their work can be more easily located in peer-reviewed journals.
Ford is a pioneering educator, administrator, and researcher whose work has been honored in each area. She has received several top research awards, been funded for more than $1 million in grants, and honored for her mentoring. All of these accolades lend to her overall life goal, “I want to leave this world a better place than when I traveled through it” (Ford 2020).
Marilyn Kern-Foxworth, the first woman of color to be elected as president of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication in 2000, is a public relations educator, scholar, and professional. She has been positioned in pioneering roles in many facets of her life and has left an indelible mark on public relations DE and I-related research.
Kern-Foxworth was introduced to the field of communication in high school, where she was selected as a reporter for a weekly radio show and served as the editor for the paper. She was the valedictorian of the class that integrated her Kosciusko, Mississippi, high school in 1971. Only weeks prior to her graduation ceremony, another teen who integrated another Mississippi high school was killed by three white men as she walked home from her graduation exercises. Although shaken by this news, it did not deter Kern-Foxworth from achieving many other firsts.
Initially interested in pursuing a career in law, it was a chance encounter with a taxi driver that changed her mind. The driver, who transported her to the bus station bound for Jackson State University, was a fan of her radio show, complimented her raw talent and encouraged her to study communication. She heeded that advice, and not only did she study mass communication, she excelled in extracurricular activities that gave her practical experience.
At Jackson State, she again was selected to host a weekly radio show. The “Molding Our Vital Economics” (MOVE) radio program was a local economic mobility initiative aimed at Jackson’s Black community. Her naturally persuasive and charismatic performance on the show generated much buzz and availed her to many opportunities. In addition to her institutional full scholarship, she was chosen by Joe Black, former Brooklyn Dodger and the first African-American vice president of a major transportation company, to receive a scholarship sponsored by Greyhound Bus Lines.
She graduated first in her class at Jackson State and continued her education at Florida State University, and after receiving her graduate degree, worked on the management track in College Relations at General Telephone and Electronics (GTE) in Northlake, Illinois. The self-proclaimed “diversity police,” Kern-Foxworth strategically placed women and people of color on the company’s brochure and instituted a program aimed at hiring more employees from UREP groups. She negotiated a week-long vacation in exchange for her diversity-related efforts and used this time to interview for admission into the Communication doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
She was accepted into the program and received the Advanced Opportunity Fellowship, which waived tuition and provided a stipend for “targeted ethnic minority groups.” Upon her arrival, she recalls being one of 250 African American students out of 40,000. This disparity prompted her to produce a documentary on the Black student experience at a predominately white campus. The film received an overwhelmingly positive response and an encore airing.
Kern-Foxworth is among the first mass communication researchers to publish empirical studies on DE and I in education and the workplace. She began this work while drafting her dissertation on the stereotypes of Blacks in advertising and continued throughout her career in the academy.
Her first appointment at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville positioned her as the first UREP faculty member in the School of Journalism. During a trip to Africa, she noticed the lack of diversity on travel brochures promoting the continent as a tourist destination and promptly began research. In querying students, she found all were not as enthusiastic about the topic. She recalls receiving a note that read, “who cares about any dumb ass, black ass Africans?” (M. Kern-Foxworth, personal communication, December 16, 2020). That comment only fueled her desire to change the perceptions of underrepresented groups.
Tenured at UT-Knoxville, Texas A&M, and Florida A&M, where she was the Garth C. Reeves Endowed Professor, Kern-Foxworth made great strides with her scholarship. She authored the best-selling book, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and Rastus: Blacks in Advertising, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow in 1994, and coauthored Facing Difference: Race, Gender and Mass Media in 1997.
Kern-Foxworth’s storied career includes her significant achievement in the profession. An active member of AEJMC, prior to her election as president, she was the first UREP member to receive the Krieghbaum Under 40 Award for outstanding effort in teaching research and public service in 1993. She accepted the 1999 MaryAnn Yodelis Smith Award for research, and the 2014 Lionel C. Barrow Jr. Award for Distinguished Achievement in Diversity Research.
During her tenure as AEJMC President, she sought ways to empower and embolden women and people of color. She developed the Journalism and Mass Communication Leadership Institute for Diversity, now The Institute for Diverse Leadership in Journalism and Communication, to increase the number of underrepresented members in leadership positions in higher education.
She has also received several accolades outside AEJMC. In 1988, she was the first woman to receive the Pathfinder Award sponsored by the Institute for Public Relations. The lifetime achievement honor is given to individuals who have published extensively to advance public relations scholarship. Additionally, she has been recognized by the PRSA with the 2014 D. Parke Gibson Pioneer Award, given to a professional “who has contributed to increased awareness of public relations within multicultural communities and has participated in promoting issues that meet the needs of these diverse communities” (D. Parke Gibson Award n.d., ¶ 1).
A compassionate mentor, Kern-Foxworth does not believe in keeping knowledge to herself. She freely offers advice to junior faculty on navigating the tenure process.
Dr. Bey-Ling Sha
Bey-Ling Sha, Dean for the College of Communications at California State University, Fullerton is a consummate educator, scholar, and servant-leader. Sha’s contribution to the advancement of public relations theory, education, and practice are well-documented and widely recognized. She has published extensively in top-tier academic journals, received outstanding faculty honors at both the University of Maryland and San Diego State University, and, in 2018, received the Institute for Public Relations’ Pathfinder Award for lifetime achievement.
Born in Taiwan, Sha came to the United States as a toddler and spent the majority of her childhood and all of her adolescent years in Houston, Texas. A precocious student, she amassed 36 college credit hours while taking high school advanced placement courses, but was denied admission to Northwestern University’s School of Journalism because she did not have any practical experience in the discipline (B. Sha, personal communication, January 7, 2021). She decided to study English at Purdue University, but became frustrated when her freshman registration standing prohibited her from taking sophomore- level courses, even after testing out of the prerequisites. Noticing her displeasure, public relations professor Richard E. Crable encouraged her to join him in the major. This change charted the path to Sha’s distinguished career.
Sha graduated from Purdue with a dual degree in Communications with a concentration in Public Relations and in French. She planned to continue her education and to research the intersection of intercultural communication and public relations. Her senior capstone professor Krishnamurthy Sriramesh, and academic advisor, Dan O’Rourke, suggested she apply to graduate school at the UMCP to study under renowned communication professors Larissa and James Grunig. Unbeknownst to her that a master’s degree was required, Sha applied directly to the doctoral program and was accepted with funding for four years. Soon after, it was discovered that she was without the graduate degree, and her program admission and full funding package were transferred to the master’s program. The financial support covered the master’s program and first two years of PhD studies, so Sha proactively found funding to cover the other two years of doctoral study. She convinced the UMCP Study Abroad Office that it needed a graduate assistant for public relations, and later she successfully applied for a National Security Exchange Program (NSEP) Fellowship, now called the Boren Fellowship, a program dedicated to “research and language study in world regions critical to U.S. interests” (“Boren Awards for International Study” n.d., ¶ 1).
As an NSEP fellow, Sha traveled to Taiwan and studied the mandarin Chinese and Taiwanese languages. While there, she collected in-language data for her dissertation, Cultural Public Relations: Identity, Activism, Globalization and Gender in the Democratic Progressive Party on Taiwan, a mixed-methods case study,1 which, along with her master’s thesis on intercultural public relations, fulfilled her original research goal of coupling culture and public relations.
Sha realized her research aspiration in practice with a full-time position at the U.S. Census Bureau in Washington, DC. A fulfillment of her obligation for the NSEP Fellowship, she was hired as a public affairs officer and worked in media relations for the 2000 decennial census— the first census where respondents could identify as belonging to more than one racial group. The Census campaign received a 2001 Silver Anvil Award of Excellence.
While working at the Census Bureau, Sha returned to her alma mater UMCP as a Visiting Assistant Professor, thereby adding public relations instruction to her practical and research experience. She later relocated with her family cross-country San Diego State University (SDSU), joining Glen Broom, David Dozier, and Martha Lauzen in teaching and researching public relations. She later joined Glen Broom as coauthor of the longest continuously published textbook in the field, Cutlip & Center’s Effective Public Relations, first published in 1952.
Always efficient and intentional, Sha seamlessly interwove San Diego State’s requirements for teaching, research and service, and earned tenure and promotion to Associate Professor during her fourth year. She was promoted to Full Professor and named the director of the SDSU School of Journalism and Media Studies soon after. After 15 years in San Diego, she moved to Fullerton to begin her current position at the California State Fullerton.
Sha has demonstrated a prodigious instinct in administration, education, research, and practice, and in addition to the Pathfinder, is the recipient of the D. Parke Gibson Pioneer Award, the PRSA Outstanding Educator Award, and the National Parent Teacher Association’s National Outstanding Advocacy Award.
Drs. Acosta-Alzuru, Ford, Kern-Foxworth, and Sha’s quest for knowledge began early in their formative years and has continued throughout their careers. They are examples of achievement despite being women and UREP. Their work has effectively informed the practice and positively contributed to the body of communication and public relations research.
The following chapter looks directly at public relations in action. Through the four-step process, the chapter analyzes campaigns that center communication to and through multicultural audiences. It concludes with a discussion of the challenges and opportunities this type of DE and I work can bring.
1 Sha’s mixed method approach utilized a qualitative case study that included a quantitative survey, interviews, and participant observation