Teaching PR Campaigns: The Current State of the Art

As the "capstone" course in public relations education, the campaigns course bears a significant responsibility to both the student and the profession. From a survey of 598 public relations professionals, Cameron, Sallot and Weaver Lariscy (1996) determined that educators have a responsibility to all students; practitioners "should look forward to the continued influx (of students) actually trained in public relations who may carry a clearer sense of how to perform as professionals." Perhaps the most important function of capstone courses in journalism and mass communication is to prepare students for the real world. These "fledgling commodities," if you will, become increasingly more marketable as higher education adapts to the needs of various constituents. As public relations education has shifted from being a variant of a liberal arts degree to training for a profession, the campaigns course must supplement the skills training for the technician role with managerial values and skills. Instead of focusing our energies on defining the discipline, we should concern ourselves with refining it. Future practitioners need to possess real-world communicative and planning skills, while basing their strategies on substantive case studies, sound research, and theoretical underpinnings. L. Grunig, J. Grunig and Ehling (1992) wrote that public relations fits into what organizational sociologists call a boundary-spanning role. Since practitioners manage relationships with external groups, public relations contributes to overall organizational effectiveness. It stands to reason that campaigns students need to experience realworld, organizational situations in order to be prepared to manage publics and be a member of an organization's dominant coalition, rather than toil as a subservient technician. The campaigns course can never be sufficient to fully prepare students for real-world experiences. For example, Strohmaier, Stratton, Novak and Leipzig (1992) argued that many students lack "communication competence," a shortfall which could be partially remedied by an introductory course in speech communication. The authors posit that this course could serve as a foundation for acquisition of advanced communicative skills in discipline-specific situations (i.e. campaigns class) later in the student's collegiate career. Teaching campaigns Many researchers lament the current state of public relations as being steeped in technicianship and low in managerial excellence. As the acknowledged "capstone" class in most public relations programs, campaigns courses, according to Kendall (1998), should be designed to hone both practical (research, planning and oral/interpersonal) skills and incorporate theoretical significance. How do we prepare well-rounded public relations practitioners? Grunig (1989) noted that truly excellent public relations departments employ communication managers who supervise the work of technicians. He contended that we should develop sequences, programs or departments of public relations which "produce graduates that will serve organizations - and society - well in the future." Leichty and Springston (1996) warned that "a lot of meaningful information is lost by categorizing practitioners as either managers or technicians." Although too much may be made of the distinction in practice, the campaigns course is usually the last (oftentimes only) opportunity for students to integrate production skills with strategic management abilities. An ongoing battle between academia and "old-school" practitioners continues over the relevance of public relations theory. Grunig (1998) contends that theory "has gotten a black eye among many practitioners because the theories taught in public relations frequently have had little application in public relations." According to Grunig, the two most important principles in teaching theory - which he claims is "the most important thing we teach public relations students in a university" - are: Showing students how all of the theories related to public relations fit into a cohesive whole and showing students applications of these theories in the real-life practice of public relations. …