Bellisario College faculty member pairs warm heart with analytical mind

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When Frank Dardis looks out his Carnegie Building office window at Penn State University Park, he sees the energy, tradition and sense of potential unique to life on a college campus. He said it helps him reflect on his journey from sociable professional to thoughtful mentor.

Dardis is a professor of advertising and public relations. He joined the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications in 2003, an event he is still trying to wrap his head around more than 20 years later.

“I was very amazed and humbled. I couldn’t believe Penn State offered me a job,” he said. “I grew up in New Jersey, so I was familiar with Penn State, and I was very familiar with its excellent reputation.”

Dardis had just earned his doctorate from the University of South Carolina. Prior to that, he had worked as a marketing professional in a variety of industries, including advertising, real estate and beverage distribution.

After a few years in the corporate world, Dardis began to search for more meaningful work that suited him better. He was drawn to the idea of teaching at the college level. Luckily, he had an “awesome professor” to reach out to — Bernell Tripp, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Florida, where Dardis earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

“I knew professors taught classes, but I didn’t know much else,” he said. “I called Dr. Tripp, and I asked her, ‘What do you do?’”

Tripp guided Dardis through the process — the doctorate, the writing, the research and publishing, the teaching and everything else that goes with being a professor in higher education. Dardis said he liked what he heard.

As a professional, Dardis enjoyed analytics and statistics. His doctorate taught him how to approach that interest in a scientific way. He said he found that serving as a mentor and teacher for the next generation was a way to “pay it forward,” and the fulfilling career he was searching for appeared.

Proud to be a teacher

“It’s a cool feeling when students come in and don’t know much about a project or putting one together … and by May they have something that is impressing marketing managers in the field,” Dardis said. “That’s the kind of stuff that really makes me proud to be a teacher.”

Dardis teaches mostly upper-level courses for advertising majors, including classes on media planning, advertising and public relations research, as well as a campaigns class that is a capstone course for all advertising majors.

He also teaches graduate courses for doctoral and master’s students, along with an online graduate course in strategic communications. Dardis has served on more than 50 dissertation and thesis committees, including Schreyer Honors theses. On 18 of the committees, he was chair.

“He's a mentor to many. I still consider him a mentor,” said Holly Overton, associate professor of advertising and public relations. “Frank approaches things in a way that makes everybody excited about the work they’re doing. He makes it fun.”

Dardis served on Overton’s doctoral dissertation committee. Today, they are colleagues and frequent collaborators.

“Frank brings strengths in all the different areas,” she said. “He is just a solid contributor across the board, and I really think he takes a lot of pride in the work he does.”

Dardis’ research interests focus on strategic communication, specifically analytics, consumer behavior and digital advertising. He has presented at nearly every major communications conference, and his research has been published in many major research journals, including Mass Communication and Society, Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising and Journal of Interactive Advertising.

“I conduct experiments that are quantitatively driven in nature; there’s a lot of numerical data,” he said. “There’s a lot of cool ways to analyze what’s going on and not going on, whether it’s a person responding to something or using eye tracking data or how long it takes for a person to hit a button or play a video game … all that type of stuff.”

Dardis is also interested in the role of ethics in digital media. As a senior research fellow for the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication, a research center in the Bellisario College, he led a call that recruited scholars from around the world to study the ethical implications of digital analytics. The results of that research will be published in an insights report next month.

“I've learned a lot from Frank in terms of how to do research efficiently and, of course, collaboratively, but also in a way that gets at the heart of what we should be caring about as researchers and what it means for society,” Overton said. “Collaborating with Frank is always a refreshing experience, because he brings not only a tremendous amount of knowledge and insight to the projects, but his warm and welcoming approach to projects is something that makes everyone feel welcome, included and empowered.”

Numbers and people

The CV may say he’s a numbers guy, but his colleagues, students and Dardis himself said he’s first and foremost a “people person.”

“I’m not saying I’m unique among the people I work with, but I’ve always been a sociable, approachable person,” Dardis said. “Starting off in promotions departments, I was always presenting to people and creating relationships with clients. Working here is a very similar thing. I meet people. I teach. We work on things and try to put projects together.”

It’s this combination of approachability and genuine care that defines Dardis’ presence on campus. For him, teaching isn’t just about lectures or grades, it’s about being there for students, colleagues and anyone who needs a hand.

“No matter what people expect, I want to be a helpful and reliable person,” he said. “Sometimes it’s hours of just talking to people to try to help them in life. And if I can’t help you, I will help find the person who can.”

So, while the view from his office window is there to help him reflect on his journey, Dardis said he never forgets about the door on the other side of the room — always open to help prepare the next generation for what’s ahead.