Ball State now has the first public relations master's program in the nation with certification from the Public Relations Society of America.
By having a Certification in Education for Public Relations, a public relations sequence then becomes globally renowned as an exemplary program for the major.
Richard Shoemaker, adviser of Ball State's public relations sequence, said the certification adds merit for not only other public relations programs to look up to but for prospective public relations students.
"In simple, blunt words, it adds a great deal of value to the PR degree you get from Ball State," Shoemaker said.
Along with this honor, the university's undergraduate public relations sequence was given a renewal of certification by the organization.
The PRSA is a worldwide organization with more than 21,000 members, according to its website. All are professionals in the public relations or communications fields. The CEPR program was started in 1989 partially in thanks to a professor at Ball State at the time who was an active member of the organization.
There are only 28 such programs in the world, 22 of which are in America and 3 are in Indiana, according to the Public Relations Student Society of America's website.
The certification of master's degree programs by PRSA started a few years ago, Shoemaker said.
"Every six years, we go through the process and representatives from the [PRSA] come in and evaluate our program and meet with our students," Shoemaker saidd. "They meet with our faculty. They sit in on classes. They look at various forms of documentation. Then we also submit information to the team."
Shoemaker said that this year a two-person team, a public relations practitioner and an educator, came in for a week and evaluated the university's public relations programs.
While they were here, they evaluated the programs in eight factors: curriculum; faculty; resources, equipment and facilities; students; the assessment of students' preparedness to graduate; professional affiliations; relationships with total unit and university; and diversity and global perspectives.
Shoemaker believes that students who go through the program at Ball State, especially the graduate program, will be able to have a leg up on the competition once they head out to look for jobs.
"What it means to our students is that they can go to an employer or organization and say, ‘I'm a graduate of the only certified program in the country.' So it's that set of standards that I think is so important to our graduates and undergraduates."
One student in the graduate public relations program is Hayley Hall.
"It looks great for the university," the graduate public relations and journalism major said about the recent certification of the program. "I think it's going to bring new people into the program that maybe wouldn't have thought this is what they wanted to be. I just think it will strengthen the program and it's going to be really helpful to the grad students that are going to leave and go into the world."
Along with national recognition, Shoemaker said the certification helps confirm Ball State's leadership position in journalism and public relations education.
"It gives [us] national recognition in the terms of the academic side of it," Shoemaker said. "It puts us in very much a leadership position or validates what we feel was our original leadership position."
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