About the School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations

Associate Professor Robina Xavier
Our school is very diverse. We cover a range of disciplines including advertising, marketing, public relations, international business and also languages which is also a great specialty to add to the  other areas. We bring all of those areas together to understand the business needs and the kinds of problems that businesses face today. And whether it’s through course work and learning about how to move into those professions or to the research side to answer some of those business problems as well.

Associate Professor Gayle Kerr - QUT
I think there are a lot of natural synergies here. Advertising compliments PR which builds on marketing which leads us to newer disciplines. So those synergies work well for what we are doing as a school but also I think for the students as well.

Amisha Mehta - QUT
We believe in on-line flexible learning. And as part of that we set up one of our courses on-line. So a Master of Business in Public Relations can be studied as an on-line course for a lot of students around Australia. We have 25 years in public relations education. And what that means for the students is an opportunity to learn from some of our graduates who are in positions in fabulous organisations all around the world. What that allows us to do is to bring them in as guest lecturers when they’re in the country or around town to actually share and impart some of the knowledge they have about the profession and also the passion they have for learning, to our current students.

We encourage the students to undertake some kind of practice which mirrors what will happen when they leave here. One of the examples of that is  Qtopia for our marketing students. They have to create a product and we have a marketing day with is Qtopia which where they come in and sell their product to potential consumers. They have to compete against others in their line, just as you would in business and then they compete to see who achieved the most at the end of the day.

Associate Professor Gayle Kerr
I think one of the main reasons to choose QUT for business is accreditation it gives you internationally. There are a lot of acronyms that are thrown about at this point like EQUIS and AACSB which really don’t mean as much when you hear them. But what they translate for our students is really a passport to travel, to work internationally, to study internationally. Because it means that while someone in an agency in London may not have heard of QUT they have certainly heard of EQUIS and they know the reputation of our business program as a result.

Bill Proud
The school itself prides itself on the standard of the lecturers’ background their experience in the industry as well as academia, our links with industry, the employment that students get when they graduate and also the experience they have while they are at university. I’ve been around a long time and worked at a lot of other universities and institutions and this simply is the best.