In August, Daniel Hunt was announced as the new chair of the recently-merged Department of Journalism and Public Relations at the University of Rhode Island.
Under Hunt, journalism and PR will still remain as separate majors, but they will be under one department.
The new chair graduated from URI in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in communication studies, according to Hunt. After graduating, he found work in financial services in Boston.
“My job was training stockbrokers how to use technology, so I became very interested in where technology was going at that point,” Hunt said. “I always thought I’d end up on television news or film when I was an undergraduate student.”
Hunt then went to pursue a master’s degree in journalism from Boston University, where he also received an advanced certificate of study.
“After working outside of the field for a little while, I decided I wanted to be a photojournalist,” Hunt said. “I wanted to document news through the visual medium.”
While working as a photojournalist, Hunt began teaching communication courses at Rhode Island College in Providence, Rhode Island. Prior to his appointment at URI, Hunt was the chair of the communications department at Worcester State University.
“I would teach my communication courses, then go off to cover my news assignments,” Hunt said. “I realized during that time that I wanted to work as a professor full-time and do documentary work on the side.”
Before Hunt was hired at URI, the University’s communications department chair oversaw multiple programs, including PR, communication studies and sports media, PR professor Joon Kyoung Kim said.
“We did not have a lot of interaction with the communications chair,” Kim said. “PR faculty members, including myself, are very happy with Dan and having a new department chair.”
Hunt’s plans for the future of the Harrington School of Communications and Media involve what he calls the ethical innovation model. This involves maintaining strong ethical backgrounds in both the journalism and PR majors, Hunt said.
“One of my favorite classes to teach is Media Law and Ethics,” Hunt said. “When I teach that class, I talk a lot about scenarios and really dig into the gray area you might run into in the professional practice of both career fields.”
Hunt said that he advocates for students to gain real-life experience in their field of study and wants to focus on experiential learning opportunities. He plans to place more focus on partnerships with local news organizations and public relations companies.
“There’s some really great things already happening here [at URI],” Hunt said. “But I want to see more of that happening in the PR and journalism curriculum.”