VCU PR Master's Degree: Faculty

• Dr. Walter Lindemann is one of the industry’s top measurement experts and consultants, specializing in public relations research, measurement and evaluation services. He recently retired from Ketchum, after creating its Research and Measurement Department and serving for 12 years as the company’s Senior Vice President/Director of Research. Prior to that, he spent two years as manager of the New York City office of Opinion Research Corporation and 10 years as president of Group Attitudes Corporation, the research subsidiary of Hill and Knowlton, Inc. During his career, he has supervised the conducting of more than 1,500 public relations, public affairs, marketing, and advertising research projects, most of them for large corporations, financial service organizations, trade associations, government agencies, utilities, education and health groups and charitable organizations. He served as the first chairman of the Institute for Public Relations’ Commission on Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation.
   
• Dr. Erik Collins is one of the nation’s top media ethics and law experts. He is Associate Director for Graduate Studies and Research at the University of South Carolina. He previously served as a senior public relations manager for major corporations including Miller Brewing Company and Philip Morris. He has co-authored Advertising and Public Relations Law. Dr. Collins Ph.D. is from Syracuse University and his J.D. is from Ohio State University.
   
• J.R. Hipple is founder of Hipple & Co., Atlanta. His clients have included leaders like Nextel, Corning, AT&T Wireless affiliate SunCom, Wyeth/Advil, The University of Virginia, ITT Industries, Proctor Silex/Hamilton Beach, Yamaha, and CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association), Bon Secours Health System, and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. He has held positions as president and co-founder of one Carter Ryley Thomas (now CRT/tenaka), managing director of PR for a division of Lintas, and executive director of Operation ABLE, a non-profit economic development program and affiliate of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. His M.S. in Public Relations is from Boston University.
   
• Pamela Lepley, APR, is Director of News Services for Virginia Commonwealth University. Previously she was vice president and director of public relations at Siddall Inc., where she developed and directed strategic marketing and communications programs for a variety of national business and government clients, including University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina, the Virginia Department of Transportation, organ procurement organization LifeNet and The Flying Hospital. Earlier in her career, Lepley was press secretary to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources and a broadcast and print journalist.
   
• Dr. Judy VanSlyke Turk, APR, Fellow PRSA, is Director of the School of Mass Communications at VCU. Prior to joining VCU in 2002, she was founding dean of the College of Communication and Media Sciences at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. Previously, VanSlyke Turk was also dean of the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina, director of the journalism and mass communications program at Kent State University and a faculty member at the University of Oklahoma, Louisiana State University and Syracuse University. VanSlyke Turk, who worked professionally for The Associated Press, and in university and corporate public relations before beginning her academic career, has been honored as Outstanding Public Relations Educator by PRSA and is a past chair of PRSA’s College of Fellows. She is co-author of This is PR: The Realities of Public Relations, and co-edited a collection of international public relations case studies developed as a project of the Public Relations Division of AEJMC. She is co-editor of Journalism Studies, as well as a member of the editorial advisory board for Journal of Public Relations Research, and Journalism and Mass Communications Quarterly. Dr. Turk’s Ph.D. is from Syracuse University.
   
• Dr. Ernest Martin is graduate program director of the School of Mass Communcations at VCU. Previously he was assistant dean, College of Communication and Media Sciences, Zayed University (United Arab Emirates), department chair, Department of Communication Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University, and a faculty member at Campbell University, Syracuse University, University of Kansas and Iowa State University. Martin, worked professionally with Cox Enterprises, Koplar Communications and Frank Magid Associates. He is co-author of Free Expression in Five Democratic Publics: Support for Individual and Media Rights, a comparative examination of attitudes toward individual public expression and desired media freedoms in the United States, Hong Kong, Russia, Israel and the Palestinian territories. Dr. Martin’s Ph.D. is from the University of Missouri – Columbia.
   

For more information, check out the School of Mass Communications website at www.has.vcu.edu/mac , the VCU Graduate School site at www.vcu.edu/graduate  or call Dr. Ernest Martin at (804) 827-3759.