PROFESSORS WHO ARE INDUSTRY LEADERS: Phil Watson Brings Industry Practice to the Classroom.

Every year, High Point University seniors write thank you letters to the faculty members who helped them break into their dream careers.

And every year, Professor Phil Watson's inbox is full of them.

Watson is an assistant professor in the Nido R. Qubein School of Communication. He holds an MBA from Harvard and has 25 years of experience as a business reporter and advertising executive in Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. He knows the business and builds his students' learning experiences around it, connecting them with internship and career opportunities across the country.

Students know him first by his booming voice and endless energy, and his classes reflect his passionate personality. At 7:50 a.m. on a Tuesday, he leads students through exercises designed to teach them how to prevent or put out public relations fires fast, just like they will on the job someday.

"Communication classes are difficult because the industry is continuously evolving at such a quick pace," says Anthony Vita, a 2016 graduate and account executive at ASTRSK, a New York City PR agency. "Professor Watson teaches from experience and makes you think critically. He immerses his students into realistic scenarios they will later encounter in their career and helps them find effective ways to handle those situations."

As they advance in the strategic communication major, they discover the incredible amounts of time he's willing to invest in them and their career preparation.

"Professor Watson and his case studies in strategic communication class helped me generate ideas when brainstorming on new client campaigns at work,"says 2014 graduate Summer Tonsfeldt, now an experiential marketing assistant at PMK-BNC in Hollywood, California. "It is evident that he not only cared about me as a student in a classroom situation, but also as an individual looking to blossom in the professional world of public relations."

Tonsfeldt and Vita are part of a large group of HPU's alumni base who point to strong faculty mentorship as the foundation for their careers. And...

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