2008 AEJMC Election

Jan Slater's Bio

Jan Slater is professor of advertising and Head of the Advertising Department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Prior to her appointment at Illinois, Slater was an associate professor and the Associate Director of the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University.

Slater joined the academy following a long career as an advertising practioner. She worked in both private industry as well as advertising agencies in Omaha, Nebraska. When she left the business in 1990 to enter graduate school, she was running her own advertising agency, J. Slater & Associates.

From 1986 – 1990, she was an adjunct professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. It was here she realized her passion for teaching.

Slater has been an active member of AEJMC since 1995. She has served on the Advertising Division’s executive committee – as research chair, teaching chair, vice head and head. She continues to work in the division as a co-chair of the Pre-conference Teaching Workshop, which is one of the longest running pre-conference programs. She served as Vice Chair and Chair of the Council of Divisions from 2003-2007, and last year was named a member of the AEJMC Strategic Planning Design Team. Slater is also a member of the Academic Committee of the American Advertising Federation working on the National Student Advertising Competition and AAF student chapters.

Her primary research focus is on brand strategy, media strategy, and building brand relationships. Her research has been published in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, MediaWeek, the Journal of Advertising Education, and Advances in Consumer Research. She is a contributing author to a series of advertising books published by Sage, and co-author of “What’s in a Name? Advertising and the Concept of Brands.” She continues to consult for national and international companies, and was recently invited to participate in a conference in Nanjing, China to discuss automobile branding in China.

Slater earned her BA from Hastings College, Hastings, Nebraska; an MS in advertising at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; and a PhD in mass communications, at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

Read Jan Slater’s Platform • Return to 2008 Election