The Missing Piece to the AD/PR Program

By Serena Sanchez

Hiking, touring museums, boot camp, and traveling to six out of the seven continents, 47 out of the 50 states, and 29 countries do not even come close to breaking the surface of Dr. Larry Hygh, Jr., the new California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) Advertising & Public Relations faculty member.

Prior to being a Full-Time Lecturer and Internship Coordinator at California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB) and, now, tenure-track Assistant Professor in the CSUDH AD/PR Program, Dr. Hygh spent more than 20 years in nonprofit communications.

Dr. Hygh’s nonprofit work had a lot to do with the United Methodist Church, a worldwide Protestant denomination in the United States. For two years, he worked in the church’s international mission agency based in New York City, where he traveled to tell stories about the places they mission for, which include 136 countries around the world.

Dr. Hygh was the Director of Communications for the United Methodist Churches in Mississippi for a year, has worked in various communications roles in the regional offices of the United Methodist Church for the Bishop in Sacramento, Calif., and began a National Fellowship for the Church.

Additionally, Dr. Hygh was the Chief Communications Officer for the Black AIDS Institute, “the nation’s only HIV AIDS think tank that provides services and tries to eliminate the pandemic in Black communities across the U.S.,” he said.

“It’s a joy and a privilege to be in the classroom, and engage and teach students what I spent 20 plus years doing,” Hygh said.

His hope to share this real-world experience and knowledge with students definitely made him stand out amongst the 40 applications the search committee received for the open position, but it is not the sole reason he was chosen.

“He compliments a lot of things that are missing from our AD/PR program,” Dr. Ana de la Serna, Assistant Professor in the AD/PR and Journalism Programs, said. “Everybody’s perception was that he would be somebody that we could work really well with.”

Other than his experience and the department’s immediate sense of his belonging, Dr. Hygh’s first impression of the CSUDH students during his teaching presentation really sealed the deal.

“You want somebody who really understands our student population, and we believe that he does,” Dr. de la Serna said.

“I think that the student population in San Bernardino is very similar to the one at Dominguez, so he understands the challenges that students at Dominguez have.”

But before Dr. Hygh could join the CSUDH community, the faculty of the Communications Department came together to create a three-person search committee to discover the most fitting member to the AD/PR program. After creating a short description of the position, the committee chair, Dr. de la Serna, made two separate profiles for candidates to apply to—one requiring a Ph.D., the other a master’s degree with a lot of AD/PR experience.

“Usually, universities only hire people with PhDs, and that’s usually people who don’t have a lot of professional experience, right? You just have the theoretical part. So, we really wanted somebody who could actually speak to what’s going on and tell the students what the field is, and just their experience,” Dr. de la Serna said.

Once those are posted, and the 40 applicants are sifted through, 10 are invited for an hour-and-ahalf meeting. “We were very aware, very conscious that we wanted to have a good diverse pool,” she said. “We were trying to give more opportunities to people who are not usually represented in academia. So I think we were very lucky that we had a lot of good applicants that fit that criteria.”

Out of those 10, three candidates remained for the position who participated in virtual interviews and on-campus visits. During each of their teaching demonstrations, they presented research or a project they were working on and had lunch with the committee. And once Dr. Hygh was chosen, the Dean made the official offer.

Transitioning from the world of nonprofits into academia was not much of a stretch for Dr. Hygh. While in Northern California, he began teaching part-time at a community college and, prior, already held a high school teaching credential. Additionally, throughout his 20-plus years with the United Methodist Church, he nationally spoke through seminars, which he believes are no different from teaching in a classroom.

“I believe you need to bring some energy and enthusiasm, you need to be excited about whatever it is you’re talking about,” Dr. Hygh said. “To me, those were transferable skills. I’m a people person, I like people and engaging with them. So it wasn’t a huge stretch for me transitioning from the nonprofit world into academia.”

The Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), the leading organization for PR majors, is a club that Dr. de la Serna thinks Dr. Hygh could assist as an advisor. Additionally, Dr. Hygh’s presence in the department will not only improve the curriculum but he’ll be a much-needed addition to the small ranks of full-time AD/PR faculty.

“Between the three of us, we can do more work because between two people it was really difficult to get a lot of administration stuff done, like curriculum proposals. We’ll also be able to offer more or different classes that are more [Dr. Hygh’s] strength,” Dr. de la Serna said.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, and San Bernardino was on lockdown, Dr. Hygh really wanted to make the virtual classroom interesting and not solely him that his students saw. He called his friends and asked them to participate in his Speaker Series, where students could listen to different voices – a former White House press secretary and an international news anchor at the time, to name a few. These are the types of experiences he looks forward to bringing to CSUDH.

“I have connections that span the globe,” Dr. Hygh said. “I want to bring those connections into the classroom to talk about what AD/PR looks like in a real-world setting.”

First-generation students are also a focus for Dr. Hygh as he becomes more involved in the DH community. Although he is not first-generation student, Dr. Hygh says he owes who he is, and where he has been fortunate to go, to those in his family, particularly the women in his family, who attended college before him. Education is not a question within his family dynamic, and he hopes for academia to become second nature for his students at CSUDH.

“I always tell my students that, when you get an education, it not only changes the trajectory of your life, but it changes the trajectory of your family’s life for generations to come,” he said.

As the Internship Coordinator at CSUSB, internships were the very heart of Dr. Hygh’s educational and professional career, and he firmly believes he is a product of them as well. As an undergrad, he interned at the Olympics in Atlanta, at the White House and Office of Public Liason in Washington D.C., and as a press release secretary in his congressman’s office. But it began with one of his pastors in college, encouraging him to go for a fellowship, which led him to where he is now.

“I believe wholeheartedly in internships, they help you figure out where we’re going in life,” he said. But that’s just one aspect of student life and growth that Hygh wishes to bring to the AD/PR Program at CSUDH. While the digital continues to change the profession, Dr. Hygh wants to teach digital skills while staying true to the basics.

“I have seen information and news dissemination, from the print age all the way into the digital,” he said. “So, for me, it’s not as much about focusing on whatever is new digitally, it’s about making sure that students have the basic concepts and theories because those have not changed. The way we deliver the information has changed.”

Though the foundations of communications remain, social media platforms are transforming the industry in numerous ways. This is especially true for public relations campaigns. That is why Dr. Hygh looks to provide students with the foundational principles of the field while getting them up to speed on the industry’s future.

“I’m a social media person and I would expect anybody who is doing a campaign has aspects of social media you’ve got to be using. I don’t use Tik Tok, but you’ve got to use it, just like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook,” Dr. Hygh said. “You’ve got to use all that.” Regardless of where he goes, where he travels to, who he helps, Dr. Hygh remains positive and a light for many because of his mission statement, “to help people see the greater humanity by celebrating what’s right in the world,” and it is no different with his arrival here at CSUDH.

“Everything I do has to fall within that realm, like, working at CSU Dominguez Hills falls within that realm, the student population falls within that realm, the community organizations, everything that I say yay or nay to, has to fall within the function of that,” Dr. Hygh concludes.