Uses data from the national survey described elsewhere in this issue to develop profiles of the desired characteristics of entry-level and advanced-level practitioners, and for educators teaching public relations in undergraduate and graduate programs. Finds unexpectedly strong agreement between educators and practitioners regarding these issues,…

With proper cultivation, opinion leaders in the community, business, and policy arenas will carry the campus message far and wide. It is the job of the campus communications director to seek out those who have significant influence in the communities that are important to the institution's well-being. (MSE)

Following corporations' lead, school districts' annual reports have become glossier, but also more substantial and sophisticated. They focus on what communities want to know, articulate a vision, and describe its implementation, displaying hard numbers and trend projections. Winners in a National School Public Relations Association contest are…

Discusses components of a successful facilities-improvement bond issue. Districts must have a clearly articulated mission statement; a unified board of education; an open visible superintendent; the ability to identify, quantify needs. Boards must be attuned to the electorate, develop an organized election campaign; communicate the message…

Students at Clovis (California) Unified School District are benefiting from GoalSHARING, a program growing out of the district's first annual education congress. Hundreds of educators, parents, and community leaders convened to determine better ways to run the schools. Parent teams now initiate changes at district and school levels. (MLH)

Identifies and describes strategies for effective fundraising: imagining the possibilities, identifying fund-raising sources, targeting fund-raising efforts, maximizing time by utilizing public relations efforts and involving staff, writing quality proposals and requests, and staying educated on fund-raising topics. Sidebars describe planned…

Describes how participants interpret the process of implementing flexible access library programs in elementary school settings and how these programs evolve over time. Topics include educational change and reform, communication and public relations, support, adequate resources, professional development, and school climate. (Author/LRW)

This article argues that as a result of the changes in Australian higher education, which emphasize economic accountability, a more instrumental university has emerged. This policy shift is reflected in university promotional material and marketing strategies that indicate the extent to which this instrumental ethos pervades higher education and…

Explores ways to establish good communications with the public that will lead to credibility, support, and bond-referendum success. Lists 10 reasons why bond referendums fail. (LMI)

Education is complex, slow, and demands teamwork. This is what educators need to be able to explain and what the public needs to understand. This is not getting across in the headlines. It is the author's experience that we have at least three categories of wrong ideas and half truths circulating around education: assumptions that mislead,…

Encompassing both the controlled messages of values advocacy and less explicit rhetorical actions such as philanthropy, community programs, and volunteerism, organizational epideictic affirms common values. This essay argues that such common values are problematized by the presence of paradox even in seemingly innocuous epideictic subjects.…

The author reviews the evolution of the Circulation Department at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) Library and Information Center from 2001 to the present. It is shown how a traditional circulation department with poor customer relations transformed itself by adopting innovative policies and services leading to improved customer…

Throughout Texas, enrollments in suburban school districts have been rising, and in some instances, the increases have been substantial. Causes of this demographic trend are multifaceted, but in most instances they are an intricate mix of state population growth and urban flight. Rapidly growing suburban districts, like all Texas districts,…

School counselors have struggled to define their roles for years. The use of technology has been discussed as one method for disseminating information about school counselor roles. Content from 456 school counseling departmental Web sites was examined and results showed that the majority of Web sites did not contain information pertaining to…

By examining data from interviews with students in the Upward Bound program (a federally sponsored program that provides academic support to students at risk who are preparing for college entrance), this study seeks to strengthen an understanding of the role of trust among urban youth at risk in the educational organizations that serve them. This…