MBA in Public Relations:Tuck School of Business Professor Helps Develop PR Curriculum for MBA Programs

A recent survey of business executives found that a whopping 98 percent think public relations should be included in business school curriculums. To this end, Paul Argenti, a communications professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, is working with the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) to develop an MBA-level public relations course designed to give future business leaders strategic communication and reputation management skills they can apply to the future corporate challenges and crises they will face.

“If you ask business executives how important organizational and brand reputation are to their jobs, they are likely to answer ‘extremely,’” Anthony D’Angelo, co-chair of PRSA’s MBA Initiative, said in a statement. “The difficulty is that if you ask them how much formal education – however basic – they’ve had in these disciplines, the answer usually falls between very little and a blank stare.”

An October survey of 204 senior executives conducted by Kelton Research and funded by the MWW Group, revealed that only 4 in 10 senior executives find the skill sets of recently hired MBA graduates to be extremely strong in terms of building a protection a company’s reputation and credibility. Nine out of 10 executives surveyed said that executives lack training in core communication disciplines. And 93 percent believe that PR is just as important to their companies as other forms of communication such as advertising and marketing.

Together with Argenti, PRSA has created a turn-key program based on three decades of Argenti’s work in the area. In the hopes of increasing adoption by the nation’s MBA programs, the course incorporates flexible full-semester, “mini-mester” and seminar formats. Tuck will take part in a pilot program integrating the new course into its MBA program for the fall 2012 semester. PRSA is currently in the process of identifying four additional to take part in the pilot and hopes to expand the initiative nationwide in 2013.

Argenti is glad Tuck is taking the lead in this initiative. “”It’s exciting to think of Tuck’s enduring and successful approach to corporate communication getting recognition and acceptance in the wider business school community,” he said in a statement.

For more on the PRSA MBA Initiative, click here.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *