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Matthew Cummings

Director, Strategic Communications at Erie Insurance
Teaches Introduction to IMC

Matthew Cummings

2012 Alexia Vanides Online Teaching Award Recipient

Matthew Cummings is director of strategic communications at Erie Insurance, a Fortune 500 auto, home, business, and life insurance company with more than $10 billion in revenue and seven million policies across 12 states and the District of Columbia. In this corporate communications role, Matthew leads the company’s PR media relations and internal channels teams.

Prior to joining Erie Insurance, Cummings served as assistant director of online programs in the WVU Reed School of Media and Communications and lead instructor in the IMC graduate program — teaching and managing IMC 410, the program’s introductory course. He has taught in the WVU Reed School of Media and Communications since 2006 and was honored with the program’s Alexia Vanides IMC Teaching Award in 2012.

Cummings’ award-winning marketing communications career spans more than 20 years in corporate, non-profit and education roles. He also served as vice president of a regional advertising agency and enjoyed a five-year career in commercial radio as an on-air announcer.

A native of northwest Pennsylvania, Cummings is a 2006 graduate of West Virginia University’s IMC program. In addition to his master’s degree, he earned a Bachelor of Arts in communications from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania in 2000 and studied at the graduate level at Seton Hall University in strategic communications and the University of Nebraska in education administration.

Professor Cummings was very active responding to all discussion threads by classmates and myself. He challenged us to dig deeper in our analysis and provided key takeaways as they related to IMC. He also started alternate threads to get our thought process reading for weekly writing assignments.

Professor Cummings took the time to respond to almost every discussion post with insightful feedback and thought–provoking responses. It was nice to have an instructor that was a part of the discussion and not just a voiceless entity.

The feedback from Professor Cummings is what truly helped me in this course. He didn't sugar coat anything for me. He knew my full potential and just wanted me to execute what I knew I could.