The social impact communications minor is now open for enrollment. The minor builds on existing strategic communications courses, combining them with lessons on social responsibility, public relations, campaign-building and interdisciplinary study. The minor has been in development forover two years within the Roy H. Park School of Communications.
Students would be required to take Presentation and Graphic Design, Public Relations: Theory and Practice and Social Impact Communications, three courses already offered by the college and typically taken by advertising, public relations, and marketing communications students. A capstone course called Social Impact Communications Lab is also required, but will run in future semesters once enrollment into the minor increases.
These courses will help students who plan to work in public relations understand the social issues affecting their audiences and the most appropriate ways of addressing them, whether they are working for a corporation, a nonprofit or the public sector.
Yvette Sterbenk, associate professor of strategic communication, who played a large part in the minor’s development and taught last year’s experimental social impact communications class, sees the social impact communications minor as valuable for more students than just APRMC majors, especially because of the eight credits in social sciences that complete the minor’s requirements.
“The point of the actual minor, although it will be an easy add-on for the APRMC students, is really to draw students from all areas of the college,” Sterbenk said. “You can come at this kind of social impact communications from a very specific place that you’re really interested in addressing, or you could mix and match from outside departments that’ll give you that perspective.”
Dennis Charsky, professor of strategic communications and director of the Park Pathways program, will act as the social impact communications minor coordinator, working directly with students to create a logical and fulfilling combination of required and elective courses.
Charsky and Sterbenk have worked to make the social impact communications minor accessible for first-year students, sophomores and even juniors who plan on enrolling in the minor. Students will be allowed to double-dip classes they have already taken for their major or integrated core curriculum requirements, and the department will offer five to eight sections of some required courses, like Presentation and Graphic Design, during the spring.
Any elective courses that students want to put toward the social impact communications minor must be at the 200 level or above, which Charsky said encourages deeper exploration into unique paths of study regardless of the person’s major.
“I hate to put communication on the end of everything,” Charsky said. “But there’s a communication aspect to environmental studies and sciences, a communication aspect for a number of sociology [kinds] of topics, women’s and gender studies, social justice and [race, power, and resistance].”
Sophomore APRMC major Katie Skirpan is a member of the American Marketing Association, Park Promotions, the American Advertising Federation and the Public Relations Student Society of America. She said in her advertising classes, professors frequently bring up stories in which corporations spread harmful stereotypes or messages, like the recent controversy regarding Target’s racially offensive Halloween costume or P.T. Barnum’s discriminatory and substantial impact on the advertising field.
“I feel like it’s a good addition because in our classes we have to talk about how a lot of advertising can be unethical,” Skirpan said. “We have unethical history, like Barnum was disgusting and horrible. He owned slaves. He had really insane shows that he would put on. But at the same time, he formed a lot of the tactics we use today. And we still see that in today’s advertising world.”
Skirpan said she thinks the creation of a minor that partly focuses on the social impact of public relations is a good thing.
“It all just comes from a lack of understanding or social conscience,” Skirpan said. “Where I feel like a lot of people lack enough context to be able to see their impact and how it may go beyond the company. … I feel like being able to take a [minor] that focuses skills for something more positive could help alleviate a lot of that nervousness about the career.”
Sterbenk said she understands the position students like Skirpan are put in by the industry, and wants the social impact communications minor to empower a new class of socially conscious communicators.
“In order to make money to live, a good portion of students [in] your generation will work for for-profit companies,” Sterbenk said. “It’s just a reality. But there’s no reason that we can’t make those companies better.”
Leave a Reply