I have just returned from the AEJMC conference, marking my last official trip before the fall semester and my sabbatical. These past few months have been extremely rewarding, filled with some incredible opportunities I would have never had otherwise without my sabbatical.
AEJMC has been a conference many of my colleagues, friends, and fellow cohort members would go to and present their research. This actually marked the first conference I went to where I 1) presented teaching research and 2) won my first teaching and national association research paper award as a doctoral student back in 2009. It’s been 10 years since then, and a lot has changed and evolved in the public relations field.
This conference was held in Toronto, which opened up some incredible opportunities for networking, exploring and meeting up with some great professionals. There were many themes that I came away with from spending the past few days in Canada from this conference, which I want to share with you.
Changes in expectations and duties of professors. I had a TON of conversations about this with educators throughout the conference. It appears there is a rise of expectations for professors to not only do research and teach, but to start formulating partnerships with industry contacts and colleagues for consulting opportunities.
I talked about the work I am doing with Facebook and of course the Educators Summit we had this year at Cannes Lions with these professors, and I do think this is a trend to note here for the upcoming PhD students here as well. We need to have a stronger tie to industry and see how we can integrate our research insights into practical applications. There needs to be more discussion on not only how to do this, but teach this in our core graduate and PhD programs.
Perhaps proposing some workshops, talks, or sessions on this would be very helpful. I also think getting industry involved and seeing how we can work together would be a step in the right direction.
Meeting up with friends. We had a chance to explore Toronto a bit and of course meet up with some great colleagues at TopHat. TopHat, which is a technology start up company in Toronto that has traditionally done audience response tools for faculty to use in the classroom, also publishes digital books (Emily and I had one published last year with TopHat and have our second edition coming out soon!). Everyone at TopHat (Polly, Jaclyn, Shannon, and Mitchell) were all super supportive and welcoming to us. Emily and I had a chance to chat with their team and even do a really cool Q+A with them about what we are seeing as educators on a variety of topics related to industry partnerships, mental health, and keeping up with the trends. It was a lot of fun! Thanks, TopHat!
Impact of #SMprofs group. As many of you know, we have a Facebook group that is dedicated to share, engage, and help each other out when it comes to teaching social media. This group was created back in October 2016, and it has grown a lot over the years. It is one of the most engaged groups I have been a part of on Facebook – where we have professors and industry professionals engage and help each other out. It’s been really special and fun to see. One of the things we have been working on (Amanda Weed and I) is to propose to AEJMC that SMprofs needs to have an Interest group within the conference.
This has been something we have discussed a lot over the past year, and officially put forward a proposal. We have not heard whether or not anything has been decided by the board, but we have our fingers crossed.
Never in my wildest dreams would I have know this group would have grown and made such an impact on many lives. We got a few shout outs during the conference, which was pretty cool, and the reason why the community is so strong is because of the people who are sharing, creating, and engaging with everyone in the group. Thank you for making this group so special, #SMprofs!
Presenting and understanding the state of the field. Toronto was a busy time for me since I had to present a poster, be part of a panel, and answer questions about a research paper we worked on. I didn’t get to play tourist too much while in Canada – but it was fun for me to be able to present and share my work.
One project I was able to share at AEJMC was my influencer marketing assignment I had my students work on last year for the Breeders’ Cup. What is great about AEJMC is the fact they have a lot of opportunities where you can share your teaching ideas, research, and projects amongst other professors.
Yet, this was not presented in the PR Division – I presented this work in the Small Programs Division. I did submit this idea to be considered to the PR Division, but it was not accepted. I had talked to a few of my other colleagues about their submissions this year (those who had traditionally won teaching awards for their work over the years on a consistent basis), and they also had their work not accepted with no reasoning, which was also very surprising. Unfortunately, this is sometimes what happens in our field with no explanation. In order to avoid this, there needs to be a clear line of communication between the authors and chairs of the papers in order to understand what to do next time and in the future.
So ,there are two ways in handling this – one, you move forward and say – well, that’s the state of the field and how things operate. Or, you take your work and submit it somewhere else so it is able to be shared with others because you feel the idea you have proposed is warranted.
As you can see, I decided to go with the second choice. As a result, I was able to have some great conversations with fellow educators and many will be able to incorporate this assignment into their classes this fall.
Being on the JPRE Board. We have several editorial boards for our journals, and one I am joining this year is for the Journal of Public Relations Education (JPRE) one, where we have published a lot of our papers over the years on social media and pedagogy research.Thank you Emily for the opportunity to be part of the board and to do this service.
It is always great to be able to give back to the field, and to help foster a stronger presence in teaching research for our field. As I mentioned earlier, AEJMC marked the first time I presented teaching research back in 2009, and fast forward to ten years later, I am now part of an editorial board focused on furthering the cause for teaching research in our field.
We still have a ways to go, but I think it is exciting to be a part of this venture and support future research in this area for public relations.
Hope you all are having a great day!
Best Wishes,
