Dr. Christopher J. McCollough

The Ayers Family Endowed Chair of Journalism and Mass Communication

Professor, Public Relations and Advertising

386 Merrill Hall
256-782-5331
cmccollough@jsu.edu     

Dr. McCollough is the Ayers Family Endowed Chair of Journalism and Mass Communication and serves as the department head of Communication and was the lead on the department’s successful push for full reaccreditation during their 2023 site revisit. Under his leadership, the unit completed facilities and curriculum updates to meet industry standards, made a rigorous curriculum more flexible and accessible for students, and has re-engaged with alumni and industry to support program development and to bring industry into the classroom. In the site report, the assessors described the programmatic changes as a difference of, “Night and Day,” and noted the comments of one alumna and advisory board member describing the state of the program as, “the best it has ever been.”

The decision to establish an endowed chair is grounded in the need to sustain the leadership of a skilled administrator with advanced knowledge of accreditation standards in journalism and mass communication, who can cultivate relevant partnership development, and who brings a contemporary vision for journalism and mass communication programs to produce well-rounded, job-ready graduates, in keeping with the standards of the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (ACEJMC). Given Dr. McCollough’s strong record as a program builder and accomplishments at JSU, he was a natural choice as the first endowed chair.

Dr. McCollough’s research blends the applied practice of public relations, the teaching and learning of public relations, and various forms of impact on communities through the application of high-impact learning practices. Within the study of public relations and political communication, Dr. McCollough focuses on the historical and contemporary working relationships between government communicators and journalists. He has consistently presented award-winning work at the Southern States Communication Association, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, as well as at National Communication Association, and public in Public Relations Journal, in addition to several edited chapters on historical public sector communications (2019), political communication on digital channels (2024), and in the field of public interest communication (2024).

His work has also grown to include the study of the impact on student learning and successful employment upon graduation through the application of industry elements in a service-learning setting, as well as the study of community impact of a service-learning curriculum. His work in these areas has garnered national honors from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Public Relations Division’s Wilcox Award for the Top Teaching Paper in PR in 2017 and 2018, and both are published in the Journal of Public Relations Education. Additionally, his analysis of the work of a community outreach center as an engine for developing service-learning partnerships garnered Top Faculty Paper honors in the Small Programs Interest Group at AEJMC in 2021 and has been published in Teaching Journalism and Mass Communication.

Recent collaborative scholarship with peers looking at the future of education in the strategic communication subfields, including the integration of social media, digital media, and artificial intelligence in the mass communication classroom. These projects have yielded presentations at the annual meetings of the National Communication Association, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, as well as the International Public Relations Research Conference, in addition to publications in Journalism and Mass Communication Educator (2020) the Journal of Public Relations Education (2021), Teaching Journalism and Mass Communication (2021, 2022), in addition to peer edited book chapters on the ethics of Artificial Intelligence (2023), and the current state of theoretical research in Artificial Intelligence use in Public Relations (2025).