Not many professors give you their personal cell phone number, make you cry tears of joy and help you plan an event with over 700 attendees. Jinx Broussard was named teacher of the year for doing that and more for her students.
Mass communication professor Jinx Broussard won the 2018 Scripps Howard Foundation Teacher of the Year Award, which recognizes excellence in innovative teaching, mentoring of students, leading the faculty and
engaging the classroom.
“I just feel like I’m doing my job every day,” Broussard said. “I’m getting this award for doing what I wake up every morning and look forward to doing.”
Broussard is regarded as a pioneer in the classroom, using a service-learning curriculum that includes students creating agency names and logos before creating and implementing campaigns for local nonprofit organizations. Her work with students has led to national organ donation awareness for the Louisiana donor registry.
Public relations campaigns produced by Broussard’s students for Donate Life Louisiana have won two first place national awards and one second place national award since 2014.
“I try to create an atmosphere just like the work atmosphere,” Broussard said. “It’s not just that we’re doing this on paper. We’re doing this for real.”
Broussard also gives each student her personal cell phone number, saying that PR professionals must work in real time, so she wants to help her students in real time.
Broussard started her teaching career as an adjunct professor at Dillard University while also working as press secretary to the mayor and director of public information, teaching a beginning news writing class. She taught three classes part-time before transferring to LSU in 2006 to be a full-time professor.
“I just love to see the students’ eyes brighten when they learn something new or when they write a really good lede or when I send them out to interview someone,” Broussard said. “I just felt really good about that.”
Broussard also tries to make personal relationships with her students. One student, who cried in fear on the first day of class eight years ago, later led her PR team and planned an event for organ donation awareness with over 700 attendees.
“At the conclusion of the course, the young woman asked me to step outside the class,” Broussard said. “She confided that she even wrote a blog about her experience and its impact on her journey from student to PR professional. With that exchange and a bear hug, I knew I had done my job.”
Broussard was nominated for the award by the Manship School of Mass Communication’s administration and did not know of the nomination until she won. Broussard also won the LSU Center for Community Engagement, Learning and Leadership Happy Award and the Guido H. Stempel III Award for Research in Journalism and Mass Communication in the same week.
“I’m not doing this for any awards,” Broussard said. “I would do this day in and day out just to have [my students] go out there and get good jobs. But more so go out and make a difference in your lives, in others’ lives and make a difference in the world. I’m not teaching to get awards.”
The award will be presented at the 2019 AEJMC Toronto Conference and at the Scripps Howard School of Journalism in Cincinnati on April 18.