Personal Profile

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“I’m just looking for life experiences,” said JMU media arts and design Professor Ken Terrell.

He has found one here in his first year as a JMU professor by merging the two worlds of corporate communication expertise and teaching. But this is by no means his first experience with mergers.

In his career as a corporate communicator for 23 years at AT&T and what is now Verizon, he experience first-hand the two largest corporate mergers up to that time. In 1996, the telecommunications industry was shaken when Bell Atlantic merged with NYNEX. Just four years later, the corporation merged again with GTE to create Verizon.

Through it all, Terrell was responsible for newsletters, speeches, annual reports, producing TV programs and creating the editorial voice for his company’s intranet, among other communication tasks. It was his job in employee communication to make sure all messages made the internal audience feel secure, positive and productive during the huge organizational changes.

Terrell used his experience and education in mainstream media – primarily television and print journalism – to be successful in the corporate world. Before working in the telecommunications industry, Terrell studied journalism and public affairs as a graduate student at American University. He worked in Ocean City, Md. for four years in traditional media outlets before joining the corporate world at AT&T. Terrel said the journalism sills he learned, such as asking a lot of questions and writing succinctly, were more important there than knowledge of telecommunications.

Although Terrell is a new professor at JMU, it is not his first time on campus. He received a B.A. in Communications here in 1978. As a student, he founded Curio, the feature magazine of the Shenandoah Valley, with Dr. David Wendelken, whose Feature Magazine Production class still creates an issue each year. Terrell also edited the sports section of The Breeze.

While visiting JMU in 2005 for two and a half days before committing to the team, he lived the life of a recruit “just like in the movies.” This included getting set up in a hotel room, having people around campus greeting him by name and going to parties where “it was like a big ‘Girls Gone Wild’ video,” Swanston said.

Meanwhile, back home in Brookesville, Florida, his truck – at this point outfitted with Burberry upholstery, 23-inch spinners and a candy red paint job – was being stolen.

With only his “little old grandma” in the house, the criminals broke in, took nothing but his truck’s keys, and drove it all the way to Georgia. There they picked up a shipment of cocaine and headed for Gainesville, Florida. The police caught them there, two days after Swanston returned from JMU, but his truck was all cut up and all the electronics in it had been blown.

Insurance covered his losses, so Swanston fixed his truck and then some, until it had the look that is associated with it now. Everything is top of the line in his truck, including its extra toys, a Play Station 2 and a horn that sounds like and is as loud as a train’s whistle. “It’s my baby,” Swanston said.

He wasn’t always so involved with the media. In fact, Terrell’s high school journalism teacher “practically had to break my arm” to be the sports editor of his school newspaper, he said.

Today, assuming the role of teacher himself has divided his life. He rents a townhouse in Harrisonburg, but maintains a home on the weekends with his wife two hours north in Vienna, Va. He has two daughters – now 23 and 15 – that have grown up there. Part of the reason he retired from being Executive Director of Employee Communication was to avoid moving to New Jersey at Verizon’s request. However, Terrell now spends Monday through Thursday in Harrisonburg, and Friday through Sunday at home.

Wendelken urged Terrell to take the temporary teaching position, which gave the SMAD department more time to find a tenured professor. Terrell enjoys experiencing the differences between teaching and running an internal communications department.

In both situations, he has high standards but gives employees and now students the freedom to operate. “As a boss, I felt good that…a lot of people wanted to come to the party we threw when I left,” Terrell joked.

As a professor, Terrell doesn’t hold back on advice for future corporate communicators. Competitive students should know how to merge their talents. “Learn how to write. Know business in general. Know your business, and find one you are passionate about,” he said.