Vanslyke Turk honored for Public Relations knowledge and research

By Tom Gresham

The Institute for Public Relations has announced that Judy VanSlyke Turk, Ph.D., director of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Mass Communications, is one of two recipients of the 2005 Pathfinder Award for outstanding contributions to scholarly research and public relations professional knowledge.

VanSlyke Turk and co-recipient, Doug Newsom, Ph.D., a professor 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 examine nonprofit and international public relations.

VanSlyke Turk said she was honored to be chosen for the Pathfinder Award.

“Receiving the Pathfinder Award is certainly one of the high points of my academic career,” VanSlyke Turk said. “What makes it even more special is that I'll be joining a group of previous recipients that includes some of the most preeminent scholars in the field of public relations.

“It is truly humbling to be in their midst,” she said. “And it's wonderful to share this year's award with Doug Newsom, with whom I have partnered on various academic endeavors for more than 20 years.”

VanSlyke Turk and Newsom will be honored at the 44th Annual Distinguished Lecture and Awards Dinner on Nov. 10 at the Yale Club in New York.

VanSlyke Turk was previously named Outstanding Public Relations Educator in 1992 by the Public Relations Society of America, and she is a past chair of the organization’s College of Fellows.

In 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 before coming to VCU.

VanSlyke Turk has also served as a member of the steering committee of the Commission on Public Relations Education and as a member of the advisory board of the International Public Relations Research Conference.

The VCU School of Mass Communications was established in 1978 to educate students for media careers, including in the areas of advertising, journalism and public relations. A unit in the College of Humanities & Sciences, the school is the third largest major at Virginia Commonwealth University with 1,077 students. The Adcenter, VCU’s graduate advertising program, is ranked No. 1 in the United States.

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.