Interview Analysis Assignment For Composition 3160
Josh Bergan
Shelly Eckstrom
Jeff Jacobson
Jamie Richardson

    Our advanced composition class was assigned to interview someone who currently has a job in a field that we were thinking about going into after graduating from college.  Our group was full of Communication majors so we decided that public relations would be a suitable field to investigate.  After trying a few public relations representatives from various places and and finding that we were turned down by all of them, we decided that it would be best to just interview a Communication professor from UMD.
   We were required to do some background research before we held the interview in order to have some knowledge of the field ahead of time.  We first looked in This is PR; The Realities of Public Relations, by Doug Newstrom.  It gave a detailed explanation of is and what a career in PR involves.  Next, we referred to the Public Relations Society of America website.  This was a very good reference.  It provided a ton of insight about what PR is, what the society does, and how to get involved yourself.  Another of our resources was the book Marketing, Advertising, and Public Relations Managers, by V. Bulford.  This source brought to light the fact that PR is involved in almost every activity that may shed a positive or negative light on his or her employer. 
    We conducted our interview on March 10 in the professor's office.  We gained a lot of valuable knowlegdge and a much better understanding of what a Communication professor does.  We found out the appropriate degrees to have, the importance of writing in the job, and the day to day jobs that a Communication professor does.
 

Here are some good links to go to for more on Communication at UMD or the field of Public Relations:
 The Public Relations Society of America website
 The UMD Communication Department homepage
 The National School Public Relations Association

Bluford, V.  (1999).  Marketing, Advertising, and Public Relations Managers.  New York.
Newstrom, D., Vanslyke Turk, J., Kruckenburg, D.  (1996)  This is PR; The Realities fo Public Relations.  New York.
Public Relations Society of America. (2000).  Welcome to PRSA.  http://.prsa.org/.  Accessed on 24, February 2000.