Jinx Coleman Broussard, the Bart R. Swanson Endowed Memorial Professor in the Manship School of Mass Communication at Louisiana State Univerity, has been selected as the 2021 Bruce K. Berger Educator Honoree from the Plank Center for Leadership in Public Relations. The Plank Center, which is housed as the Univerity of Alabama, has a primary mission to help develop and recognize outstanding leaders and role models in public relations. The Bruce K. Berger Award recognizes individuals who are, or have been, full-time educators who have touched the lives and careers of countless students through mentoring.
“I have learned that mentoring is what gives me joy. There is nothing more fulfilling than engaging young people and emerging professionals in developing the roadmap to self-empowerment. That can bring immeasurable satisfaction,” Professor Broussard said.
An award-winning scholar who has taught public relations, strategic communication, media history, and mass media theory for more than 20 years, Dr. Broussard is nationally recognized as an expert on the history of the Black press, and her research also focuses on representations of racial and ethnic minorities, media history, alternative media, crisis communication, public relations strategies. and tactics, and the civil rights movement.
Professor Broussard joined the faculty at the university in 2006, after teaching at Dillard University in New Orleans. She is the author of African American Foreign Correspondents: A History (Louisiana State University Press, 2013). She is co-author of Public Relations and Journalism in Times of Crisis: A Symbiotic Relationship (Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2019).
Dr. Broussard was the first African American to earn a bachelor’s degree in journalism at Louisiana State Univerity, where she also earned a master’s degree in mass communication. Professor Broussard holds a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of Southern Mississippi.