DePaul Professor Ron Culp has been recently named among Crain’s Chicago Business Magazine’s “Who’s Who in Chicago Business” for 2014.

“Who’s Who” is described on Crain’s website as a “directory of Chicago’s movers and shakers … from Fortune 500 CEOs to civic leaders to philanthropists.” Culp received this honor as a result of his extensive work in the field of public relations.

Outside his work at DePaul, Culp runs a PR consulting business that he founded called Culp & Co. He has created and writes for a PR advice blog known as CulpWrit, and has recently co-written a book with DePaul Professor Matt Ragas titled “Business Essentials for Strategic Communicators: Creating Shared Value for the Organization and its Stakeholders.”

Despite his many accomplishments and accolades, Culp describes himself as having simply fallen into the field of PR.

“I started out in journalism when I graduated from college,” Culp said, “And then I kind of accidentally fell into public relations. I fell in love with it, and have been infatuated ever since.”

This is not Culp’s first time being named on the list. When asked, he admitted that he’d been on the list two or three times before this year.

After working in corporate public relations for about 35 years and government public relations for about 10 years, he was eligible for retirement, but decided to explore other PR opportunities. He worked at the PR firm Ketchum for about seven years, after which he decided to start consulting with a few clients independently, mostly with senior executives and CEOs who were trying to rebrand themselves.

After this, he became an adjunct professor at DePaul in addition to his private consulting. But before long, he was asked to become a full-time faculty member and professional director of the Public Relations and Advertising program (PRAD).

“I look at it as helping train the next generation of public relations leaders,” Culp said. “It’s an impressive group of students in this college.”

Culp said he probably works 60 to 80 hours per week, with most of that time dedicated to DePaul.

“He has had an amazing career,” Ragas said. “And to have someone of his caliber on our faculty and to be a colleague is just fantastic. The recognition is very well deserved.”

Ragas and Culp’s book is a culmination of the two professors’ careers in the field and in teaching. “(The book has) grown out, in a large part, because of our classes and teaching here at DePaul,” Ragas said. “It’s geared toward students as a textbook, but also toward working professionals as a manual of sorts.”

It has a release date slated for Dec. 17, and it can be found on Amazon.com.