Dr. Kaye Sweetser
Pronouns: She/Her/Ma'am
Professor
Director, Glen M. Broom Center for Professional Development in Public Relations
SDSU
Bio
Kaye Sweetser, Ph.D., APR+M, Fellow PRSA is a professor of public relations in the School of Journalism & Media Studies at San Diego State University. At SDSU she serves as the director of the Glen M. Broom Center for Professional Development in Public Relations.
In fall 2025, SDSU honored Dr. Sweetser with their Alumni Association Award.
Dr. Sweetser has 30 years of public relations experience and more than two decades in the classroom. As one of the most prolific scholars in online public relations, Dr. Sweetser's research agenda focuses on how practitioners use digital media.
As an academic, Dr. Sweetser believes the strongest assets she brings into her classroom are her real experiences from her own practice of public relations. She has a PRSA Silver Anvil, considered the Oscars of PR, along with Silver Anvil Awards of Excellence.
In 2010 while at the University of Georgia, she advised the winning team of students in PRSSA’s Bateman Case Study Competition. She won numerous teaching awards and served as a Research Fellow for the Society of New Communications Research in 2008.
Dr. Sweetser was Accredited in Public Relations in 2006. From 2013-2015, Dr. Sweetser served on the Universal Accreditation Board as the Research Work Group Chair. The Public Relations Society of America inducted her into the College of Fellows in 2017, a distinction she holds as a high-point in her career.
All of this points to a career of hard work by Dr. Sweetser. No stranger to digging in and creating opportunities for herself, Dr. Sweetser earned an associate’s degree from Tidewater Community College in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and a bachelor’s degree from Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia while working full time in the PR industry. Her master’s and doctoral degrees are from the University of Florida. Go Gators.