Developing a Public Relations Element in Climate Change University Curricula: Challenges for Higher Education

The goal of the chapter is to discuss various aspects of developing and promoting a university curriculum that incorporates climate change and PR elements. Positioning education about climate change as one of the higher education (HE) responsibilities, it was aimed to demonstrate the need to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum with an embedded PR element, as growing evidence suggests that teaching climate change as a single-discipline subject might not be successful. The core component of human geography provided epistemological grounding and opened the possibility for appreciating various contexts of climate change: social, political, cultural and economic. The need to investigate individual and group-level relationships was satisfied by including PR expertise in the area traditionally defined as a vocational discipline focussed on building relationships based on mutual understanding. The micro level of psychology complemented the PR element by equipping students with the understanding of mental processes behind attitude formation and change. It is concluded that marketing new and interdisciplinary degrees – like those addressing climate change – requires university communication departments to adopt a house of brands strategy and drop the traditional, branded house approach.