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Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Communication students need mentors; you can be one
I was a lucky guy when I took my first corporate communications job.
I’d been a newspaper reporter for a couple years when I made the switch. In 1977, few universities offered degrees in communications. At my college, the journalism department offered a single class in PR. So when I made the jump from journalism to communications, I didn’t know much about it. Since I was going to be assistant editor of a weekly employee newspaper, I figured it was just journalism for a different audience.
Fortunately, two of the people to whom I reported became my mentors. The late Ken Estes, editor of the ArcoSpark, and Dave Orman, ARCO’s manager of employee communications, spent the time with me to help me grasp the world of organizational communications. In fact, I recall viewing them as mentors and not as bosses.
Today, universities do offer degrees in communication. Professional associations provide student memberships in student chapters. But there’s nothing like regular contact with an experienced professional who has taken an interest in you and your career. Unfortunately, there are far more students aproaching graduation than there are mentors to help guide them.
That imbalance led Allie Osmar to set up a site designed to match students and professionals. Of course, far more students have applied than pros.
I offered myself as a mentor through Allie’s initiative today. It’s a way to give something back to a profession that has been very good to me, as well as to honor the effort that Ken and Dave made on my behalf more than 30 years ago. I would urge my colleagues in the communication business to do the same.
Here’s the audio comment Allie submitted to For Immediate Release explaining the program; we played it in the listener comments part of Episode #411:
