Become a media-savvy practitioner by combining strategic communication with skills and knowledge from your major.
Why Minor Public Relations?
Public relations skills are in demand in corporations, government agencies, nonprofit organizations and the entertainment industry. You’ll learn about crisis and strategic communications, audience analysis and social and emerging media as you prepare to create public relations strategies that work with your primary degree focus area. This program can provide a concrete career path for majors in Political Science, Family and Consumer Sciences, Marketing, Kinesiology, Cinema and Television Arts or any other program on campus. Minoring in public relations specifically allows you to enter the workforce to make clear your ability to create messaging for your focus industry.
Why Study Public Relations at CSUN?
CSUN has a robust Public Relations emphasis within the Journalism department, including active student clubs and available workshops. You’ll have the chance to participate in nearly all of the core classes for this area, gaining functional industry skills and an understanding of the media landscape. Faculty teaching PR courses often have extensive industry experience and teach with the digital future in mind. You’ll be especially prepared for the changing media business, with a foundation in the basics of reporting and working with journalists.
What You'll Learn
You’ll take foundational classes in media storytelling and reporting that will prepare you to understand the journalism industry and create pitches and content that get attention. The upper division News Literacy class also fulfills a general education requirement for an easier path to graduation. The central PR classes teach the direct skills of writing press releases and creating social media content for clients, which lay a foundation for ethical and impactful work in the future. You’ll learn to build campaigns across media and manage messages for a variety of situations. The option to take one of the department’s selected topics courses opens up a deep dive into subjects like audience analytics, entertainment PR or social media management. You can apply this work to industries as broad as politics, fashion, sports, broadcast television, entertainment, music and social media.
Careers & Outcomes
You’ll be well suited to provide communication and media relations support within an industry related to your major. Nearly all large corporations and nonprofits have communication teams that work with journalists or directly with the community. Work in this area often also includes social media content creation or marketing.
Job areas include:
- Internal communications
- Corporate communications
- Media relations
- Social media management
Student Organization
You may join the Public Relations Student Society of America campus club.