In winning the 1995 "Outstanding Educator Award" of the 18,000-member Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Dean Kruckeberg was cited as having "excelled in his involvement with students, teaching, research and service to the public relations profession."

PRSA, in its national release to the media, reported:

Kruckeberg is the author of 19 scholarly publications, including his and Kenneth Starck's ground-breaking book Public Relations and Community: A Reconstructed Theory, which won the first annual PRIDE Award from the Speech Communication Association Commission on Public Relations. He also is a co-author of the sixth edition of This Is PR: The Realities of Public Relations.

After the announcement of this national honor, a previous winner noted in his congratulations to Dr. Kruckeberg:

Your work in support of public relations education and research is well known throughout the world, and by honoring a person with your renowned credentials PRSA makes those of us who have won the award in the past look even better.

Dr. Kruckeberg is especially well-known among public relations scholars and practitioners for his scholarship in international public relations and particularly in international public relations ethics. Dr. Mark McElreath, the primary author of the new code of ethics of the International Association of Business Communicators, has said his review of Dr. Kruckeberg's research and his discussions with Dr. Kruckeberg about cultural universalism and relativism as they relate to public relations ethics had a major impact on the content of this new world code of professional conduct.