UNC Charlotte Launches Center for Global Public Relations

I received an email about this today. I think this is great for Charlotte's PR community and I'm planning ot attend the event.

Details below:

UNC Charlotte’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences will launch its new Center for Global Public Relations on Saturday with panel discussions featuring industry professionals.

Experts will discuss international communications issues and give recommendations for the industry in the 21st century.

“The dedication of the center will provide an excellent forum where experts will explore global issues that concern all Americans who are trying to understand how their lives are intertwined with others throughout the world, whether socially, culturally, politically or economically,” said Dean Kruckeberg, director of the Center for Global Public Relations.

The event is free and open to the public. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m. in the Storrs building on campus.

Panel discussions include:

•9:15 a.m. – “Global Alliance and Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy,” featuring John Paluszek, senior counsel of the global communications company Ketchum, and Ed Brynn, retired career Foreign Service Officer and former Ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ghana;

•11 a.m. – “Multinational Corporation PR and Public Diplomacy,” featuring Ron Rand, retired brigadier general and now director of communications for Lockheed-Martin, and Bob Grupp, president of Grupp Global Partners;

•1:30 p.m. – “Public Relations in the Pacific Rim and the Middle East,” featuring Doug Newsom, public-relations scholar and author, and Judy VanSlyke Turk, president-elect of the Arab-U.S. Association for Communication Educators;

•3:15 p.m. – “Public Relations in the Newly Independent States,” featuring Joe Epley, founding member of Worldcom Group, the global consortium of independent public relations firms, and Katerina Tsetsura, a Russian scholar at the University of Oklahoma who has performed extensive research about global-media corruption.

The center seeks to support the evolution of global public relations as a specialization of professional practice.

For information about the dedication event, contact Allison Reid at (704) 687.0084 or allison.reid@uncc.edu.

UNC Charlotte is the fourth-largest campus among the 17 institutions of the University of North Carolina system. It is the largest institution of higher education in the Charlotte region. The university offers 18 doctoral programs, 62 master’s degree programs and 90 programs leading to bachelor’s degrees.

Fall 2008 enrollment exceeded 23,300 students, including nearly 5,200 graduate students.