Fall 2002

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Institute CEO Jack Felton, public relations students honored

Honorees (l-r) Rocky Cabagnot, Jack Felton and Andrew Ragsdale (Photo by James Leslie)

Key public relations honors have come to UF faculty and students this summer.

Professor John W. “Jack” Felton, adjunct lecturer in public relations and CEO of the Institute for Public Relations based at UF, has won the Arthur W. Page Society’s third Distinguished Service Award. Previous winners were the late Patrick Jackson and Betsy Ann Plank.

Felton was honored in 1999 by the Educators Academy of the Public Relations Society of America with its first David Ferguson Award,

Felton joined the UF faculty in 1993 as Freedom Forum Distinguished Visiting Professor.

A long-time corporate public relations executive, he worked for U.S. Steel Corp. and Interstate Brands Corp. before becoming vice president at the McCormick Spice Co. in 1977, a position he held until 1995 when he returned to UF.

He is a former two-term president of PRSA and winner of its highest award, the Gold Anvil, in 1992.

The Institute is a professional organization with special emphasis on public relations measurement and evaluation.

Rocky M. Cabagnot, MA 2002, won the 2002 Master’s Thesis Award from Northwestern Mutual Foundation for the best thesis on public relations. He received a $2,000 cash award and his faculty adviser, Dr. Laurence B. Alexander, associate professor of journalism, received $1,000.

The panel of judges was from the Institute for Public Relations and the Public Relations Division of AEJMC.

His thesis was titled Celebrities and the Right of Publicity: A Study of Economic Damage and Moral Rights.

Cabagnot is an Americorps volunteer working as a housing attorney with Three Rivers Legal Services Inc. in Gainesville. He earned a law degree at UF in 2001.

Andrew Ragsdale, an M.A. candidate in the College, won the Allstate Insurance Co. Summer Scholarship/internship in public relations. The award carried a $6,000 stipend.

He worked 12 weeks in the corporate relations department at the company headquarters in Northbrook, Ill.

Ragsdale earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in education at UF.

Samsup Jo, a Ph.D. student in public relations at UF, won the 2002 Walter K. Lindenmann Award. The $15,000 award, sponsored by Ketchum, the worldwide public relations agency, provided a $7,500 eight-week internship and a $5,000 study grant to the winner.

Jo’s faculty adviser, Dr. Linda Childers Hon, associate professor of public relations, received a $2,500 grant.

Jo’s research proposal was for a confirmatory factor analysis of the measurement scale of public relationships.