IN MEMORIAM
ALAN SCOTT
Alan Scott, professor emeritus in the Department of Journalism, College
of Communication, died August 23, 2001. He was 88.
Dr. Scott taught public relations and advertising at The University
of Texas at Austin for 34 years until he retired in 1983. He and
his wife
of 61 years, Sybil, moved to Austin in 1949, from Lansing, Michigan,
where he had taught at Michigan State University. Ten years later,
Dr. Scott
became the first full-time public relations educator in the country,
and by the mid-1960s he established one of only six on-campus public
relations
clubs nationwide. These clubs became the foundation for what soon
would be the Public Relations Student Society of America, today’s
leading pre-professional student organization.
Dr. Scott was one of four public relations educators to endorse the
creation of the student society in November 1967. On April 4, 1968,
the Public
Relations Society of America’s Board of Directors created the first PRSSA chapters
at nine universities that met charter requirements, including offering
a minimum of two public relations courses. UT was one of these “alpha” chapters,
and was named the Alan Scott chapter, the first after a person. Dr. Scott
used to joke that had there been e-mail in 1968, UT would have been the
first university to be chartered, and not Ohio State University, because
the mail reached national headquarters in New York City faster from there.
The two courses Dr. Scott created were Principles of Public Relations and
Public Relations Campaigns, the first and last courses UT public relations
majors take today. In the late 1960s, Dr. Scott added a third course to
the curriculum: Public Relations Writing. He created the first student-run
public relations firm called the High Noon Agency, because it met at noon
during the Public Relations Campaigns course. In the early 1970s, PRSA
named Dr. Scott Educator of the Year, and PRSSA named the Alan Scott chapter
the Best in the Country. He was a member of PRSA’s distinguished
College of Fellows. Over the years, Dr. Scott arranged for public
relations students to visit public relations firms and departments
from Austin
to New York City to Honolulu. The picture accompanying this memorial
shows
Alan and Sybil in the middle of the back row with a group of UT students
at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Dr. Scott was a strong believer
in the value of professional experience, and always looked for opportunities
to expose students to the practice of public relations.
He co-authored one of the leading introductory textbooks on the discipline,
This Is PR: The Realities of Public Relations, with his former student
and professor of public relations at Texas Christian University, Dr. Doug
Newsom. The text is in its eighth edition.
Dr. Scott earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees
in journalism from the University of Missouri, and his doctorate
in education
from
The University of Texas at Austin. He worked as a reporter for the
Associated Press in Columbia, Missouri. He is a founder of the Texas
Public Relations
Association and for 15 years was its Executive Director.
In addition to his wife, Dr. Scott is survived by two children and three
grandchildren.
<Signed>
Larry R. Faulkner, President
The University of Texas at Austin
This memorial resolution was prepared by a special committee consisting
of Professors Ronald B. Anderson (chair), Wayne Danielson, and S. Griffin
Singer.
