Professor Susan McFarlane-Alvarez’s Life’s Work in DEI Enriches MSU
McFarlane-Alvarez makes research contributions to MSU’s Communication Solutions for a Diverse Society and co-authors new DEI course textbook
By: Kylee Maurer
For MSU advertising professor, Susan McFarlane-Alvarez, Ph.D., her three-decade academic career in diversity, equity and inclusion research and teaching all started at the movies.
McFarlane-Alvarez says whenever she saw a movie that she felt was not very representative of the culture that was being presented, it made her want to be a part of movies that did genuinely represented their cultures. She then started building an interest in representation and focusing on how important it is.
Her sparked passion led her to teach and research at the University of the West Indies, Georgia State University and Clayton State University before joining MSU. She currently teaches ADV 205, is the internship coordinator for advertising, and is a faculty advisor for 42pointSEVEN.
McFarlane-Alvarez is also the director of Communication Solutions for a Diverse Society, a research and practice consortium in the College of Communications Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University. The consortium is focused on advancing discussions on issues of access, inclusion and belonging, and is dedicated to academic and communication practices and industries.
“Since there are five departments in our college, it is harder for researchers to touch base with each other, so the idea behind the consortium is to foster collaborations among researchers who are researching areas that touch into diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging,” said McFarlane-Alvarez.
In addition to advancing the world through research, she also believes that as communications specialists, faculty researchers have a certain role to play in terms of DEI and how it happens in other fields. To that end, she’s literally helping write the book on diversity in the advertising and public relations industries.
McFarlane-Alvarez recently co-authored Different Together: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging in Advertising and Public Relations with ADPR professor, Anastasia Kononova, Ph. D., and professor, Teresa Mastin, Ph.D., vice provost of MSU’s Faculty and Academic Staff Affairs.
Beginning in fall 2023 it is being used in PR 310: DEI in PR and Advertising as a course textbook MSU students.
“Among us three editors, the diversity of the authors in terms of their national origin or their experience is just remarkable,” said McFarlane-Alvarez. “It’s a collection of phenomenal people who are either researching or are practitioners for a multi-perspective textbook that I am hoping students enjoy.”