2005 Alexander Hamilton Medal Winner

James E. Grunig

University of Maryland

Dr. James E. Grunig is the first educator to win the highest award of the Institute for Public Relations – especially fitting because his professional career from early on has been intertwined with this institution.

Jim Grunig is professor emeritus of communication at the University of Maryland, where he served on the faculty beginning in 1969 after earning his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin. Widely recognized as one of the world’s leading public relations scholars and theorists, he has edited, authored or co-authored five books and more than 200 book chapters, journal articles, reports and papers.

During his 36-year career, he advised 75 master’s theses and 24 doctoral dissertations. His protégés are themselves now teaching and conducting research at universities around the world.

In the 1980s, Dr. Grunig directed the IABC Research Foundation’s Excellence project, universally regarded as the most significant original research ever conducted in the public relations field.

While he was still in his early 30s, the Institute awarded the young professor three research grants, each of which resulted in a journal paper. For six years, Jim served as associate editor of the Public Relations Review, founded and at that time published by this organization. In 1984, he was the first winner of the Institute’s Pathfinder Award, given each year for excellence in academic research.

Finally, Jim was a founding and long-time member of the Institute’s prestigious Commission on Public Relations Measurement and Evaluation. Some of his most cogent recent papers, reminding us that public relations at its heart is about public relationships, have been written for this Commission.