Office Hours: Stacie Swenson

What does it take to become a communicator who truly makes an impact? According to Hubbard School Lecturer Stacie Swenson, it starts with curiosity, empathy and a willingness to meet people where they are. As a teacher, Swenson is helping students in Murphy Hall rethink what communication looks like: both in the industry and their individual lives. In her classroom, she challenges students to slow down, stay curious and think beyond the binary.

Before coming to Hubbard, Swenson worked in the corporate, nonprofit and agency worlds. Across each space, she built a career that at its core has understood audiences, as she crafted meaningful messages and helped people take action. Along the way, she discovered a passion for teaching, one that ultimately led her back to the University of Minnesota, where she now helps students connect to the field of communication.  

We sat down with Swenson to talk about her journey from industry to academia, how she teaches ethical decision-making and why enthusiasm might be the most important skill a student and communicator can have.

Backpack: How did you end up at Hubbard?
Stacie Swenson: I was working in the industry for more than 20 years at Minneapolis’ “corporate carousel” — places like Target, UnitedHealth Group, as well as non-profit organizations and agencies. I loved every experience I had. During that time, I also taught in the Minnesota State Colleges and University systems, including St. Cloud and Anoka-Ramsey Community College, and realized how much I loved teaching. It was one of those moments where I thought, “Oh, I’m totally where I’m meant to be.”

A mentee that I was advising through the Hubbard Mentorship Program was who kicked me into teaching. I have always been the person training people when they’re new employees and had been the manager of a couple teams by then, and I liked the aspect of helping people get to know what they need to be doing, learn new skills and continue to grow. I was lucky to land at the University of Minnesota — it’s my dream job. Not even kidding. I did my undergrad and master’s at Murphy, so it feels like home base. It’s been updated a lot over the years, but it is definitely my happy place.

B: You’ve worked across corporate, nonprofit, and academic spaces. So what has each environment kind of taught you about communications? 
SS: Corporate spaces for me were a lot about understanding your audience. Whether it was working one-one-one with an executive and trying to bring them to a point that was relevant for their approval, or large-scale events that you know we had to get them to do something or think something differently, the goal was always the same: learning to tailor messages and think hard about what would succeed with various audiences.

In nonprofit spaces I learned how to be a team of one and how to be effective with a broad base of skills, just to know enough to be dangerous or know enough to kick off a project. So a little bit about everything.

Then for academic spaces, it’s about meeting people where they’re at because acting out of curiosity and getting to know people is so much more important in the classroom. I know how intimidating it can be as a student and to raise your hand or to go to office hours or do any of that kind of stuff. So that’s really my whole ethos: meet people where they are and just never ever operate out of judgement but rather out of curiosity.

B: How do you get students to engage with ethical issues that don't always have clear answers? 
SS: I teach media ethics as one of my courses in addition to my skills classes within strategic communications. In that class, I let students know from day one that there’s very rarely 100% correct answers when it comes to ethical dilemmas at all and that the time we’re going to spend together, we’re going to spend getting familiar with and internalizing the kind of norms and expectations within individual industries — whether it’s journalism, public relations or advertising. Then I just give the tools and ways for people to slow down. Like I said previously, it was to get curious, slow down, think it through and take into account other perspectives: "Okay, this might have seemed like a bad decision on behalf of this PR team in this corporate scandal, but here’s why it actually was a strategic decision based on X,Y and Z." Even if it personally wasn’t what you’re going to do in your day-to-day individual life, it might have made sense at the time.

Those kinds of things are really fun to talk about as well because people love to pick apart news headlines, celebrity scandals, PR missteps or advertising campaigns, but I love to take the content and go with it. In fact, we’re currently doing social media and I’ve stopped putting together slides just because everything moves so quickly from semester to semester. I try to keep things as fresh as possible and have a drive for giving people models and kinds of ideas of what the industry expectations are at this exact moment in time, teaching them ways to ask themselves questions that lead to ethical outcomes.

B: If students take away one thing from your classes, what do you want it to be?
SS: I want people to be excited about communications. Whatever format it takes, I want them to be enthusiastic about connecting to people through their communications. So if it is a love of organizing people at a campaign level in your office, be that person. If you are a creative director and you love engaging people through visuals and experiential type communication. Whatever it is, I just want you to be excited about it when you leave Hubbard because that enthusiasm is going to bring you so far when it comes to interviewing and getting to that next step.

B: What is your Hubbard Hot Take?
SS: I think it’s probably more of a warm take. It’s not that controversial. We tend at the school to talk about things in a binary way: this or this, this versus that. One of the things is strategic communications. It doesn’t happen in the binary of communication agencies or corporations, right? There’s so much in between and that’s the part that I like to show people. 

The second kind of binary I’m constantly kind of trying to bring down is the fact that it isn’t advertising versus public relations anymore. Because everything or every job in those two industries is now integrated. We’ve got paid and earned and shared media, and that’s a much better way to look at it because companies aren’t just advertising for media.

I think we also need more snacks nearby Murphy, not just in the tunnel or over at Starbucks.

To learn more about Stacie Swenson and her work, visit her CLA faculty profile.
Text by Ashaar Ali, photo by Jessica Chung, Office Hours logo by Reagan Frystak, Backpack students.