Part of my job is coordinating BGSU’s online master’s in strategic communication, and as a result, I get to teach grad students in that program. Likely in the future, I’ll teach some in person as well, as I did at Kent State.
Amid my peregrinations among these students I’ve picked up some interesting tidbits of information, and I thought I would share them with you.
- Grad school isn’t easy. In my grad program (I was on the five-year plan) I went part time while teaching a class and serving clients in Communication AMMO. Three of those were retainers of significant commitment, so for a time, Saturdays and Sundays were full of reading, writing, and thinking. That’s fine, and I enjoyed it. But it’s worthwhile to know that I worked for myself, and could fudge my schedule around to make time for all this stuff. These students inevitably work for other people, and at varying degrees of seniority. Making the time is hard when balancing work and family responsibilities, and professors should know that it’s a different gig than when they were in school, mostly going straight through and not attempting to strike that balance.
- Academic writing is, well, not the way people normally write or speak. We all know style (AP, APA, Chicago, MLA) is just meant to provide some rules that make it easier to read and to write. But our insistence on following the arcane formality that’s commonplace in academic writing makes it much harder to learn the material. I use a YouTube video from a Brit Ph.D. student to give suggestions on how to read scholarly material. It involves OneNote or something similar and helps demystify how you pick out important stuff from the morass that often results. It would be awesome if the plain language movement from finance could find an auxiliary footing in the academy!
- The applied, for people who will not go on to Ph.D. and an academic life, is more important than the mechanics and the theory. I qualify that statement, though, by claiming that theory is every bit as relevant and important as the applied, but we have to bring it to life! Learning how to do structural equation modeling would be a mind-expander, but in reality, most of us in the comms profession will never have the need to do that. We do need to know what it is, how to recognize a good research design, what to do with the data and how to apply it to strategy!
There’s more, but this post already has a tl;dr pall gradually creeping over it.
Suffice to say, I get SO much from the time I spend reading and listening to students! Love this job.
Thanks Bob. Appreciate you taking the time to comment. I’ve met many academics who are great students of the PR and Marketing game, but they would readily agree that there is no replacement for having done those jobs.
Thanks for sharing Sean…spot-on, as usual. The “application” aspect is the elephant in the room for all communications programs, both undergrad and graduate. Most scholars have little interest (or experience) with application, because they have not had significant experience as practitioners. One can write a dozen articles, read a million books, and survey all they want, but the experience of making strategic decisions in an organizational setting can’t be picked up without putting in the time.
Also, I certainly agree that theory is important too. Most of my grad students over the years would say (after the class ended), “Wow, I wish I would have known all this at the beginning of my career, I would have been a better professional.”