Interview with Clara Cox
Director of University Publications, Virginia Tech
by: Beth Breeding

Clara Cox, director of University Publications for Virginia Tech, agreed to sit down for an interview on Oct. 5, 2005.  The meeting took place in Cox’s office in the Media Building on Tech campus, but Cox’s experiences stretched far beyond there as a media professional. 

The questions that follow were selected from a 30 minute interview. 

Q: You attended Radford for a B.A. in English. You were on the dean’s list for three quarters. That is really impressive. How did you stay focused when you were there?

Cox: Ha-ha, well I had actually been a good student in high school.  I was the class salutatorian and so I was accustomed to paying more attention to my studies.  Although, when I went to Carson-Newman it was more difficult and I don’t think I ever made the dean’s list there.  When I transferred to Radford for some reason I found it easier.  I had fewer distractions because I lived at home and I commuted.

Q: Did you take any courses at Radford that resemble what you are doing now?

Cox: No, I took courses at Carson-Newman College that helped prepare me to be a newspaper reporter, although my major was English.  When I transferred to Radford I don’t believe they offered any journalism type courses at that time.

Q: I learned that recently your job title has changed to director of University Publications.  How does this differ from what you were doing before in the University Relations office?

Cox: Before I was director of Publications and Outreach Communications and I had news and information functions not only as part of my own job duties, but job duties of some of my employees.  My boss calls me the unofficial Tech historian, so in 1997 he told me he wanted me to update Tech’s history.  We had a book called the Historical Data Book come out in 1972 and he wanted me to update that, but because my workload has been so heavy I have not been able to make a lot of progress on it.  Also, several years ago we put in a proposal to write a biographical sketch about each person who has a building named for him or her and so what we are doing is putting up Hokie stone pedestals in front of all the buildings that are named for people and I write the short biographical sketches about the person the building is named for.  It has just been really difficult with all of my other responsibilities to get that done and I’m getting near retirement age and I thought the only way I could get those two projects done before I retire is to have fewer responsibilities.  I talked with my boss about moving the news functions from my unit to a unit called news and information, which made sense because I also was the PR person for the Provost’s Office and the Virginia Center of Civil War Studies.  I transferred two of my employees to news and information and the news and information functions I was performing went to another director…We also design and copy edit…write and edit the university’s publications. So, we have a lot going on in our unit even without the news and information functions we were performing.

Q: On that topic, you are responsible for a lot of the university’s publications.  How does a department of just 13 people get all of that done in one year?

Cox: We produced approximately 160 publications last year.  Well, the bottom line is I have great employees who work hard, who are professionals, who are good at what they do.  They are reliable and motivated and that’s how we do it.

Q: What led you into this specific job field?

Cox: I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. After I graduated from college I became a reporter on a small newspaper in my hometown of Pulaski.  It just was not what I had hoped it would be.  The hours were long and the pay was exceedingly low for a college graduate. For example, I started working at minimum wage after graduating from college.  Back in those days that was a dollar and a quarter an hour.  I had the Virginia Employment Commission on my side and became friends with the manager and when I decided to leave the newspaper he said that the Radford office had an opening for a counselor…I did that work for about three years.  Then I quit working to have my daughter and when she stared back to school I wanted to go back to work.  I started working part time at the Virginia Water Resources Research Center as a clerk typist but when they found out I could write they started asking me to work on projects. I had an experience where I took over a project that someone who had a master’s degree had been working on…because I didn’t have the master’s degree I couldn’t get the pay and so I decided that was ridiculous and I didn’t want that to happen to me again.  I started working on my master’s in English and before I finished a job opened up in University Relations; they needed a PR person in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies and I applied for it and got it.  I believe it was the year and a half I spent at the newspaper that got the job for me.  It wasn’t planned…before that time ended the president, who was then Jim McComas, decided he would really push the extension area of our mission.  A lot of colleges and universities throughout the country were placing more emphasis on public service so he made the dean of my college the acting VP of Public Service and since I was there all the time it was easier to use me to do the PR…My boss created a position for manager of Public Service programs and he wanted that person to start a new public policy magazine and so I applied for the job and got it and moved out of the college into the University Relations office in Burruss and stayed there until I started overseeing the Virginia Tech magazine and some other additional duties.

Q: I have noticed that a lot of media professionals do start out as journalists.  Were there any benefits to it (journalism) other than pointing you to what you really wanted to do?

Cox: I think it gave me a better understanding of how the media operates, what they want.  Although, I found that is not always true…You never really know because a lot of times it can be an individual choice of a reporter of what they think would be more interesting to their readers, but it did help and it helped in knowing how to talk to the media and how to pitch a story to the media. Having that background was beneficial to what I was doing in the College of Architecture and Urban Studies.

Q: Did your master’s courses help prepare you anymore for a PR career than your undergraduate?

Cox: The way working on a master’s degree helped me was it gave me more confidence because I had a piece of paper that said I knew enough to get a master’s degree and it also helped me in my writing.  All the courses I took had papers, we just had to write papers all the time and I had some really good professors…

Q: What do you look for in a writer or an employee?

Cox: If it is for a position where they will be writing I want to know that they can write well and I have been amazed at the number of people who are in the field who really are not very good writers.  Some are outstanding and fortunately I have them working for me. I usually ask questions about what they consider to be the most important part of a news release or an article and what they consider the strongest skills a person in that position should have.  So, I do look for strong writing skills, but I also want people who are enthusiastic and who will go the extra mile to get what they need to get the job done. I’m very turned off by people who say that’s not my job and I am happy to say nobody in my unit has ever said that when I asked them to do something that is beyond their job description because some of their job descriptions have been pretty specific, but they have been willing to take on extra work.

Q: It sounds like you have some good people working for you.  In your opinion what is the difference between a mediocre writer and an excellent writer?

Cox: Oh gees. I know it when I see it! I would say that an excellent writer knows how to write to appeal to the audience. The mediocre writer is just going to write something that will be ok and it is easy to get by and they don’t have to do that much work.  An excellent writer will do whatever research is required and knows how to translate that into something that appeals to the audience.

Q: You have been in this career for a while and had a lot of different jobs with the media. Since you started and now in 2005 how had the media industry changed?

Cox: I think that they are more inclined to look for things that lean toward the sensational because of television and the Web.  I think the print media, for example, has suffered as far as readership and I think that probably is one thing that has made the lean toward the sensational.

Q: Do you know of any specific events that might have set off a change or affected it greatly?

Cox: Well maybe getting channels like CNN.  People have access to CNN so they can see the news anytime of the day.  They don’t have to actually sit down and they can watch the news while they eat their breakfast or whatever.  They don’t have to spend time sitting down with a newspaper…

Q: I saw that you have written a book called Images and Reflections: Virginia Tech.  That is from 1872-1997.  That is quite a long time.  Is that the one you are still working on?

Cox: No that one was published.  It was a coffee table book. What I did was I summarized the administrations of each president and I used history books written by Harry Temple and Lyle Kinnear…We will be doing a new one next year.

Q: You have been writing the biographical plaques for each building.  Did you research all of that information yourself or was it given to you?

Cox: Some of it I researched myself and some of it I hired students to research for me.  I employee an English major right now to do research for me…

Q: How many buildings do you think you have written plaques for?

Cox: I have written approximately 34 or 35.  Well, I have written about a third or a tad over a third.  Of course every time we name a new building that means more work for me!

Q: I noticed from you resume that the list of things that you have done seems to keep growing, especially here on campus. What is one of the biggest things you have done on campus that is the most important to you?

Cox: That is hard to say.  What I enjoy the most is working on Tech history. So what I enjoy the most is working on the book and I also wrote a history about women on campus that was published…I really like talking about Tech history.  I guess is retrospect the thing that I am most proud of is the work I did on our first student, William Addison Caldwell.  We didn’t know much about him at all other than the fact that he was the first student to register, we thought. We weren’t even positive about that.  He was elected secretary of his class and he died after working as a molasses salesman for a warehouse in Wilmington, North Carolina.  And because of my research and work we found out he walked over here and we got a copy of his report card…We just found out a lot about him and as a result of that we have a lounge named after him in GBJ and the online card catalog for Newman is named for him.  We are in the process now of making plans to erect a statue of him. So I guess that is what I am most proud of…

Q: How did you get involved with the Florida Magazine Association?

Cox: I am a member of the Virginia Presswomen and we have a communications contest every year.  I submit some of my stuff to it for judging and anyone who wins first place in the state goes onto the National Presswomen competition and I have won some awards from them.  That could not happen without judges.  Just out of the blue they got in touch with me and asked me if I would judge some of their categories.  I have no idea why they got in touch with me.  I have been doing that for three years now and it is interesting to see what other people do and to put it together and compare it and see the other side of what a judge has to go through when making decisions.  It gives you a new perspective.

 Q: I read that in June 2005 you spoke at the Virginia Tech Women Making a Difference program.  I would say that you are definitely one of the most highly accomplished women here at Virginia Tech in this field.  How do you think that involvement of women has changed in the media and publishing fields and do you feel like you are more welcome in the field now than you were before?

Cox: Women still are not represented at higher levels of media.  The administrative levels do not reflect the involvement of women at the lower levels.  How its changed is that there are more women.  It just is still not represented.  I have never felt unwelcome.  I think it is an individual thing.  It depends on the person in the media you are talking with as to their own biases.

Q: Was it difficult for you being a mother and professional at the same time?

Cox: Yes, it was when my daughter was younger.  I had to put her first and if she was sick I stayed home with her because my husband is professor.  He couldn’t because he was teaching classes.  I was the one who had to make the sacrifices if she got to school and had forgot to take her lunch money or anything I was the one she called. If she had a problem I was the one she called…I always had to just drop everything and go.