Formerly called "poster sessions," this research set-up allows presenters to display their research findings on a bulletin board and discuss their research with people who specifically seek them out in a one-to-one situation rather than on a traditional panel where scholars present and maybe there is time for a question or two. Scholar-to-scholar research encourages people who are interested in your specific topic to talk directly with you -- eliminating the uninterested.

If your paper is selected to be presented in the scholar-to-scholar session, you have a refereed paper just like someone who has traditionally presented on a panel. In fact, the PRD is planning to include several of its top paper winners in the teaching and research categories in this session. No other panels have been scheduled at the time of the scholar-to-scholar session so everyone can attend and talk to their selected presenters.

--Barbara DeSanto, Vice Chair
and Division Conference Chair,
Oklahoma State
paradoc@cowboy.net

Annual PRD Awards Luncheon: Big Easy Edelman Worldwide Style

The tradition of fine dining sponsored by exceptional public relations icons will continue at 1999 AEJMC Convention in New Orleans, thanks to Edelman Worldwide.

Gourmet guru and immediate past PRD chair Bill Adams reports that Edelman will host the luncheon Friday, August 6, from noon to 2 p.m. More details on how to reserve your space will be available in the spring PRD newsletter.

Edelman Worldwide was founded in 1952, and today is the only global independent public relations agency. It employs 1400 employees in 36 offices, 60 of which are strategically located worldwide. Edelman Worldwide generates more than $145 million in fees annually.

"In 1952, I dreamed of a firm dedicated to the practice of public relations and committed to client service. Today we're one of the five learges firms in the world, but our focus has remained the same--delivering outstanding results for clients," Daniel J. Edelman, fournder and chairman, notes on the company's website.

For more information on Edelman Worldwide, visit its website at (Please note there is no hyphen between the "l" and the "m" in the web address!)

Pre-convention panel highlights curriculum

The research, the work of many different public relations scholars and educators, will include a look at current curriculum as well as make recommendations for the future.

This is an exceptional opportunity to understand the current state of public relations education and compare it to your own program.

PRD officers, committees set 1999 goals: Goals emphasize research, membership

Research Chair:
John Ledingham,
Capital University
jledingh@capital.com

Goals for the Research Committee include clarifying who can submit papers to the current convention paper categories: faculty research, teaching, and student competitions. The gray area is faculty-student authored papers. Please see John Ledingham's column (on page 4) with suggestions about how to resolve this issue. Additional goals include increasing minority and female paper judges.

Journal of Public Relations Research:
Elizabeth Toth, Editor
Syracuse University,

Goals are to continue to provide the PRD membership four issues of JPRR that feature the most outstanding academic scholarship in the public relations available; provide feedback to potential authors that will develop their manuscripts into publishable research and further their research abilities. Dr. Toth notes that her goal of expanding the number of pages in JPRR will have been met with the January 1999 issue.

Professional Liaison:
Laurie Wilson,
Brigham Young University,
Laurie_Wilson@byu.edu

Goals are to maintain the practice of broadly publicizing research funding opportunities and paper competitions sponsored by professional organizations, such as the Arthur W. Page Society, IABC and PRSA; to assimilate information on interests, specialties and availability of PRD members to provide professional organizations so that they may draw on our resources for speakers, and vice versa; to begin creation of a consulting fellows program that would identify opportunities and coordinate the placement of academicians into the professional arena and professionals into the academic arena as experts and consultants for periods from a few days to several months.

Professional Freedom and Responsibility:
William Thompson,
University of Louisville,
ComConsul@aol.com

Goals are to form alliances with other divisions and practitioner organizations to develop programming that will educate members and professionals concerning PF&R areas; to poll other PF&R chairs to assess interest in compiling a list of academicians to serve as media sources on ethics and diversity issues; to assess interest in the PRD about contribution to an ethical practices in public relations case studies collection for the PRD website; and to assist in 1999 AEJ convention programming. (See page 6 for William Thompson's column on PF&R).

Graduate Liaison:
Pat Curtin,
University of North Carolina,
pcurtin@email.unc.edu
and Bey-ling Sha,
University of Maryland,
beyling@wam.umd.edu

Goals are twofold: to stimulate graduate student interest and membership in the PRD and to establish the position of Graduate Liaison in graduate students' minds as a coordinated communication channel for them to voice questions and concerns to the Executive Board. Specific objectives include finding out what research, if any, has been done on graduate student awareness and involvement levels and concerns. If no recent research exists, survey graduate programs to determine numbers of graduate students in public relations and their issues/concerns. Follow up on Dr. Mitch Land's suggestion to include graduate students in PRD social functions, such as the PRD Awards Luncheon.

Membership:
Emma Daugherty,
California State University, Long Beach,
daughert@deltanet.com
and Candace White,
University of Tennessee,
white@utk.edu

Goals are to help ensure member satisfaction; identify member needs; retain current members; and increase membership by 5 percent by July 1999.

Specific tactics include tracking non-renewing members through the national office so that a personal letter from the Division chair can be sent; invite paper presenters who are not PRD members to join; invite AEJ members who listed PR as a teaching area to join; invited members of the PRSA Educators Academy to join; use current members as a bridge to new members; and develop a PRD recruitment brochure. Tactics related to member satisfaction include survey research via the PRD newsletter to ascertain satisfaction levels; identify membership benefits and publicize them!

Membership figures reported by the current Membership Chairs and the Head of the PRD are as follows: 339 in 1993; 395 in 1994; 416 in 1995 (per a memo circulated at the August 1995 business meeting in Washington, D.C.); 421 in 1996; 435 in 1997; and as of October 30, 1998, 402 (per Pamela Price, "Monthly Membership Count" memo to Council of Divisions). By this accounting, there appears to be a decline in PRD membership, although there has been no standard reporting procedure in place that could account for membership fluctuations within a year's time.

For example, membership figures could be reported every July 31, the time period closest to the AEJMC convention, for the sake of consistency. (Special thanks to Bonnie Neff, Meta Carstarphen and Pamela Bourland-Davis for their help in assessing where we've been and what tactics were useful in helping increase membership during their tenure as Membership Committee chairs.

Again, thanks to committee chairs for delineating goals. Please volunteer your time and interest in helping the various chairs accomplish their goals.

--Susan Lucarelli Dimmick
University of Tennessee
sdimmick@utk.edu

AEJMC to PRD: Commendable work in 1998; keep it up in 1999

Every year AEJMC's Standing Committees review each Division and Interest Group's efforts related to Professional Freedom and Responsibility, Teaching and Research. These reports are published and made available to Division and Group heads. A summary of these reports follows so that PRD membership will understand the strengths and weaknesses as viewed by the larger AEJMC division leadership.

PRD'S PF&R Efforts: PF&R addresses each Division and Interest Group's demonstrated "concern" given to the following five areas: free expression; ethics, media criticism and accountability; racial, gender and cultural inclusiveness; and public service. The AEJ PF&R Committee wrote that the PRD had a "...well-rounded and interesting set of panels at the Baltimore 1998 convention and has close collaboration with practitioners," and commended the PRD for continuing "...its pattern of stimulating panels by partnering with a variety of other divisions. It has close associations with PRSA and professionals. The division had PF&R articles in each issue of two internal publications." Attention was paid to all five areas of PF&R.

PRD's Teaching Efforts: Four teaching areas have been identified by the Committee on Teaching Standards as areas of concern, and each Division and Interest Group is reviewed in these areas. The four areas are: curriculum; activities and development; leadership activities, including administrative and structural support for teaching; course content and teaching method activities; and assessment activities. The PRD was given special commendation for "...establishing a professional liaison and task force to enhance links with the professional community." The PRD does need to encourage more teaching sessions and teaching paper sessions related to assessment.

PRD's Research Efforts: The Standing Committee on Research wrote: "The Journal of Public Relations Research remains the cornerstone of the Division's research activities, and its policy of inviting submissions from top convention papers contributes to its overall quality. The Journal's impressive on-time publication record is to be commended. In other research activities, the Division actively publicized its paper competitions, thereby increasing the number of student submissions. The Committee is pleased to see increased student involvement, but encourages the Division to consider mainstreaming student and faculty papers for both judging and presentation purposes. The Division's efforts in to increase participation by women and minorities seems to be effective and the Committee hopes the Division will continue its work in this area. In addition, the Division should explore out-of-convention research activities, such as participating in mid-year meetings."

--Susan Dimmick
University of Tennesee
sdimmick@utk.edu

Membership plan needs member help

There is good news and bad news about membership in the division. The good news is since 1993, membership in the division has increased by nearly 100 members. The bad news is in the last year membership decreased slightly.

In 1993 the division reported 339 members. In 1997 the division had 435 members. For whatever reasons, membership declined in 1998 by a loss of 22 members. We all know there are many reasons to be a member of the division -- our challenge is to share those reasons with our colleagues and get our numbers back up.

Our goal for 1999 is to retain our current members and increase our membership by five percent. To accomplish this we need your help. Emma Daugherty and Candace White, membership co-chairpersons, have contacted everyone who presented at AEJMC in Baltimore, but is not a division member, to invite them to join. Members of the PRSA Educators Academy who are not PRD members will also be contacted.

There are three things that each of us can do to help achieve our goal. The first and most obvious is to be sure to renew your membership in the Public Relations Division when you pay your annual AEJMC dues.

Second, contact a colleague who is not a member of the division. In this issue of the newsletter, you will see reasons why others in the division think membership is valuable to them. Share the newsletter and add your personal reasons for membership.

Third, identify graduate students in public relations in your program -- especially doctoral students who are planning academic careers -- and invite them to join the division. There is a special page for you to cut out and share with graduate students. Please make copies for all the students you know who may be interested as well as make a copy to post.

May all our goals for 1999 be successful.

--Emma Daugherty
California State University, Long Beach
daughtert@deltanet.com
and Candace White
University of Tennessee
white@utk.edu

PF&R liaison explains mysterious initials as he seeks volunteers

If you're like most people, you didn't know what those AEJMC conventioneers wearing the "PF&R" buttons at the Baltimore conference were advertising.

Neither did I, but I had the additional humiliation of not knowing what PF&R meant when Susan Dimmick asked me to be the PR division's PF&R chair for the 1998-99 year.

So, what's PF&R? As I learned, PF&R stands for Professional Freedom and Responsibility. AEJMC identifies five PF&R subject areas: free expression; ethics; media criticism and accountability; racial, gender, and cultural inclusiveness; and public service.

In many ways, these define successful public relations practice - encouraging our clients to take actions that benefit their publics and then encouraging open and responsible communication about those actions to all sorts of audiences.

In public relations education, we've probably been remiss in educating citizens (and unfortunately, journalists and other communication practitioners represented within AEJMC) about the responsive role that PR practitioners play in our democracy.

That's the problem I'd like all of us to tackle. As PF&R chair, I'm helping PR division vice head Barb DeSanto schedule more convention sessions dealing with PF&R issues, most in cooperation with other AEJMC divisions. I'm trying to forge alliances with other associations to give our members speaking opportunities at practitioner conventions and other meetings. I'm also communicating with the other AEJMC divisions to establish a source list for reporters who need expert comments on ethics and diversity issues.

As members, you can help too.

First, I'd like to hear if it would help your classroom teaching if you and your students had access to public relations case studies on ethics and diversity issues via a web site. If enough of us are interested, I'd like you to share the experiences you've encountered that might be useful for fellow educators who are trying to stamp these values on our students.

I welcome your comments; I'll be looking forward tohearing from you.

--William Thompson
University of Louisville
CommConsul@aol.com

Eeine, Meenie, Miney, Moe: Which category does my paper belong in?

An interesting point has arisen regarding the placement of papers within our research presentation categories. Currently, we have three paper competition categories: research, teaching and student.

The question that has arisen concerns papers authored by both faculty and students. On the one hand, it seems perhaps a bit unfair for papers on which faculty are first author to be entered in the student category. Indeed, this year's call for papers specifies that such papers should be entered in the research or teaching categories, not student competition. On the other hand, some feel that papers lead authored by students with faculty as second or succeeding authors, should be allowed in the research category competition.

Both sides have a point. Personally, I would prefer reserving the research category for faculty or faculty-first papers. Rochelle Larkin offers what seems to me to be an excellent idea; add a fourth category:
1. Teaching papers.
2. Faculty only research papers.
3. Student only research papers.
4. Co-authored student-faculty or faculty-student papers.

Whatever the Division membership decides it wants to do, the changes would NOT take place until next year (the Year 2000 convention). Please think about this and be prepared to discuss it at the business meeting in New Orleans. Also, there have been suggestions that the PRD could benefit from additional research sessions. This sounds like a good idea, but one that also needs discussion. Thoughts -- please e-mail me.

--John Ledingham
Capital University
jledingh@capital.edu

Elementary, my dear Watson...

It amazed me a number of years ago to learn that a doctorate was the major qualification needed for me to teach in higher education. None even asked me if I knew anything about teaching. Sure, with "teaching experience" always accompanying those placement ads. But come on, we've all had professors who knew nothing about teaching after spending a lifetime droning on and on in boring lectures.

So I turned to my wife, Lea, an elementary teacher, for innovative teaching techniques that would liven up my lectures and really create an environment for learning. I experienced the exhilaration of a hands-on approach rooted in strategic curriculum design -- which, translated means: My students are sometimes involved in learning activities that parallel those taking place in my wife's third-grade class! For example, Lea introduced me to synthetic exercises I developed for teaching feature writing. The method was such fun that I wrote a paper and submitted it to this public relations competition. To my delight, it won a third-place award a few years ago!

Maybe some of you have discovered a learning theory that you've applied successfully in teaching your public relations classes. Or, you're developing a learning theory that applies to public relations education. Share your findings and/or ideas with us by submitting a paper to this competition.

--Mitch Land
University of North Texas
mland@unt.edu

PRD offers grad students career introduction

For membership information, see the AEJMC home page: (Click on "divisions," then "public relations")

--Bey-Ling Sha
University of Maryland
beyling@wam.umd.edu