| Donn Silvis: The Real Thing
To earn the Lyle E. Gibson Distinguished Teacher Award, you have to be the real thing: knowledgeable, committed, innovative, compassionate, concerned, and effective. The 2006 recipient, professor of communications Donn Silvis, has all those attributes – and he has something else related to "the real thing": a superb collection of Coca-Cola cans and bottles in his office.
Some years ago, students began the tradition of gathering the international versions of the familiar red-and-white cans and trademark bottles during their world travels and bringing them home as souvenirs for Silvis. The result is a testament to global brand recognition and a professor with strong links to his students.
With samples from such places as France, Kuwait, Holland, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, and Belgium, Silvis says he has “to write them down” to know where each container came from. “They have their branding image; you don’t have to look twice at them. Coca-Cola red, everybody is familiar with it; they always know what it is. Someone in marketing is doing their job.”
Silvis ought to know. He’s been in the communications and public relations field for 25 years, and has run his own successful firm, Silvis Communications, for a decade. He puts all that experience to use in grooming students to become industry-ready professionals in a wide variety of communications specialties.
“My whole background is in corporate communications, so I know a lot of the people who our students are going to go to and apply for a job,” he says. “So I want them to be qualified. Otherwise, I’ll have my friends in the industry asking, ‘What are you teaching them?’”
In the process of being selected as the Outstanding Teacher, Silvis’s students said they appreciated his non-textbook approach to education, both while they were in his classes and long after they had graduated.
“The two main things they pointed out were, number one, that ‘Even though I graduated, you still care about me,’” he says, “and number two, ‘The most valuable thing you did in the classroom was bring a real life to it, based upon your past experiences.’
“I’ve done basically everything I’m teaching, and I didn’t learn it from a book. Knowing who your audience is and reaching it doesn’t change. Of course, I have to update it, with new technology, strategy, and principles. In our industry, we have the hands-on technical aspect and the managerial aspect of strategic thinking. So we need to teach them how to do the technical work in PR writing, and the principles of PR and how to apply management strategy to it.”
From his beginnings as a lecturer in the CSU Fullerton School of Communications to his 16 years at CSUDH, Silvis says that watching students evolve has been his greatest reward.
“The highlight of my career is seeing the students achieve their successes,” he says. “You see them grow. In a corporate environment, you really don’t do that. You hire people because they’ve already grown and have their technical knowledge. Here you see students actually blossom, taking what they’ve learned and absorbed in the classroom and applying it to their careers.”
Looking back at a long list of alums who are involved in every imaginable area of media from journalism to corporate communications, Silvis says he remembers most those students who didn’t quite measure up at first but turned themselves around over time.
“Several of my former students have their own PR companies, and are doing very well,” he says. “Some work for large corporations, and others work for non-profits.
Some students are very creative and energetic in school. But some are here to pass the time. Those are the ones we need to work harder with because they need a little boost. They’re probably the ones that I find more pleasure in helping to advance their careers and get a job. I ask them what they want to accomplish and why they’re here, and I help them set up a game plan and establish some objectives and career goals. I have them take responsibility for their activities and let them know they need to get their work done.”
As an undergraduate at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, Silvis indulged his love of sports in the position of sports information director. After graduating with his bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1965, he was faced with the dilemma of being drafted to the Vietnam War or enlisting in the Army, which he did the day before his draft notice appeared in the mail. He attended officer candidate school, spent his honeymoon in Airborne School, and then served for 13 months as a battalion adjutant for an artillery unit in a relatively peaceful Korea. He says that the experience, during which he rose to captain and received a Commendation Medal, has been important in his teaching career.
“As an officer, you lead groups of people,” he says. “You’re training them and teaching them. You are dealing with people, problems, and situations. You have to be flexible, while knowing all the rules and policies.”
Upon his discharge from the Army, Silvis began his communications career as a one-man corporate communications staff for Norris Industries, with sole responsibility for writing, photography, and graphic design for an array of internal and external publications. He then spent ten years as assistant vice president and the director of marketing communications for Avco Financial Services before starting his own company, which boasted clients such as Avery-Dennison and ARCO. He earned his master’s degree in mass communications from CSU Fullerton in 1988.
Having worked with high profile clients in the past, Silvis is all too aware of the importance of establishing and maintaining a positive identity for a product. As a professor, his “products” are education and career skills. His commitment to the satisfaction of his students, who are essentially his customers, extends well beyond their time at Dominguez Hills.
“The Communications Department recognizes the importance of maintaining contact with our students,” he says. “They’re not just a number. They’re a name and a person. They have families, they have problems. And we’re here to help them however we can. We have a banquet every year and invite all the alumni. It not only keeps them informed about what the department is doing, but also allows our current students to talk with them and set the scene for networking.”
A secondary “client” is the job market at large. Defining the “brand awareness” of a Donn Silvis student, the former department chair says, “They’re good thinkers, they’re flexible, they plan, and they’re able to get the job done. They’d better be, or they’re going to have to talk to me.”
Nine out of ten communications students would agree: He’s the “real thing.”
- Joanie Harmon
|
