The Institute for Public Relations announced today that Dr. Judy VanSlyke Turk of Virginia Commonwealth University and Dr. Doug Newsom of Texas Christian University will receive the 2005 Pathfinder Award for outstanding contributions to scholarly research and public relations professional knowledge. The Institute will also bestow the Northwestern Mutual Best Master’s Thesis Award on University of Florida graduate Yimin Wang.
The awards will be presented at the 44th Annual Distinguished Lecture & Awards Dinner, Thursday, Nov. 10 at The Yale Club in New York City. This year’s lecture will be delivered by Bill Nielsen, retired corporate vice president of Johnson & Johnson, speaking on “The Character of Public Relations at 2005.” Tickets and tables can be purchased by visiting the Institute’s website, instituteforpr.org, or by calling 352-392-0280.
Dr. Judy VanSlyke Turk, director at the School of Mass Communications at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Dr. Doug Newsom, professor in the College of Communication at Texas Christian University, are co-authors of This Is PR: The Realities of Public Relations, one of the world’s most widely used public relations textbooks. Now in its eighth edition, the work has been published in English, Russian, Chinese and Romanian. It was the first public relations textbook to extensively discuss nonprofit and international public relations.
In March 2002, VanSlyke Turk founded the College of Communication and Media Sciences at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates, holding the dean position for more than two years. She was named Outstanding Public Relations Educator in 1992 by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), is past chair of PRSA’s College of Fellows, a member of the steering committee of the Commission on Public Relations Education and the advisory board of the International Public Relations Research Conference.
In 1982, Newsom was the first woman to receive PRSA’s Educator of the Year Award, and she served as chair of the PRSA College of Fellows. She is co-author of three textbooks, co-editor of a woman’s studies book and the author of 12 book chapters. Twice a Fulbright lecturer in India and Singapore, Newsom has also conducted workshops in South Africa, Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Poland, Vanuatu and India. She is also a member of the advisory board of the International Public Relations Research Conference.
Wang, a Chinese native, received a master’s degree in mass communications from the University of Florida this summer. Her thesis, “Cross-National Conflict Shifting: A Case Study of the DuPont Teflon Crisis,” drew lessons for international public relations practice by examining how an administrative action by the US Environmental Protection Agency triggered a large-scale consumer product safety crisis in China. Dr. Juan-Carlos Molleda, assistant professor in the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, served as her thesis advisor.
The Institute for Public Relations is an independent nonprofit dedicated to the science beneath the art of public relations. The organization exists to build and document the intellectual foundations of public relations, and to mainstream this knowledge by making it available and useful to practitioners, educators, researchers and client organizations.
Northwestern Mutual, long-time sponsor of the Best Master’s Thesis Award, is the nation’s largest direct provider of individual life insurance and has consistently been named the “Most Admired” company in its industry, by a Fortune magazine survey.
