COLUMBIA, Mo.— Dianne Lynch, Ph.D., has been selected the 24th president of Stephens College by the College’s Board of Trustees, announced Board Chair George Ann Harding today. Dr. Lynch has served as dean of the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College in Ithaca, N.Y., since 2004. She will be formally introduced as president during a campus visit this week and will officially take office on June 2, 2009.

Dr. Lynch replaces Wendy B. Libby, Ph.D., who has served as Stephens’ president since July 2003 and who will become the first female president of Stetson University in Florida in July 2009. Dr. Libby’s last day at Stephens is June 1.

“Dianne has been described by her peers as smart as a whip; dynamic; genuine; creative; energetic; positive; and happy. Also: forward-thinking; innovative; and leading edge,” says Stephens trustee and 1971 alumna Jill Griffith, chair of the search committee. “What more could we ask of a president who will lead our ‘Smart, Strong, Savvy’ women at Stephens?”

The Park School of Communications has approximately 1,400 students and 60 full-time faculty.

Lynch is a member of the national accrediting council for schools of journalism and mass communication (ACEJMC); a member of the national Journalism Advisory Council of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation; and a former Fulbright Senior Specialist in new media technologies and learning.

Prior to becoming dean at Ithaca College in 2004, Lynch was a faculty member and chair of the Department of Journalism at Saint Michael’s College in Burlington, Vermont, a private liberal arts college of approximately 1,800 students. In that capacity, she won local, regional and national awards for teaching, including recognition in 1999 as the national Journalism Teacher of the Year.

Lynch was the founding executive director of the national Online News Association. In that capacity, she was the editorial director of the first national study of the credibility of online news. She wrote a biweekly column about women and technology, “Wired Women,” for ABCNews.com from 2000 to 2003, and a weekly column on new media ethics for the Christian Science Monitor from 1998 to 2002.

She earned her master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, studying feminist history in journalism, and her Ph.D. in Art History and Communications from McGill University in Montreal, where she studied feminist theory and social identity development. Lynch’s research focuses on the learning styles and knowledge production of “digital natives,” children who grow up in virtual environments.

Lynch is a member of the Board of Trustees of WSKG, a public broadcasting station serving 21 counties in New York and Pennsylvania.

She is married to Philip Coleman, who was for many years a high school chemistry and physics teacher and is now the coordinator of the Chemistry laboratories at Ithaca College. They have four children: Andrew, 28; Amelia, 25; Nicholas, 23; and Annie, 11; two dogs, Madison and Addy; and two cats, Willie and Bella.

“The Board of Trustees and I are delighted that Dr. Lynch will be assuming leadership at Stephens College. The presidential search committee brought forward the best candidate, from a very strong pool, who can bring to Stephens the vision and imagination that will see our beloved college into the future,” Harding says.

Dr. Susan Resneck Pierce of Academic Search assisted in the presidential search, which had been underway since Libby announced her election as president of Stetson University in November. Pierce noted that the Stephens pool of interested candidates had unusual depth and breadth. The search committee included two students, the chair of the faculty, two vice presidents, the president of the Alumnae Association Board, and six trustees (alumnae and local community members included). Harding, a 1958 alumnae and trustee, served an ex-officio on the 12-member committee.

More information about the committee membership and search process may be found at http://www.stephens.edu/stephens/presidentialsearch/.


Other Media Contact:
Dave Maley
Associate Director, Media Relations
Ithaca College
607-274-3480
cell: 607-279-3168
maley@ithaca.edu

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