Stanley Wearden, the current dean of the College of Communications and Information, announced last week that he would be retiring from his position as the dean of CCI in order to become the provost and senior vice president at Columbia College Chicago, a private arts and media education college in Chicago.  

 Wearden has been involved with Kent State University for thirty years rising from an assistant professor to professor then dean.Wearden has served as the dean of CCI since 2009.

“I am excited about this new opportunity, but of course that excitement is tinged with sadness because I have loved, and will continue to love, Kent State and all the faculty, staff and students here with whom I have had the privilege of working and teaching,” Wearden said in an email to CCI students.  “I will miss you, and I hope you will stay in touch with me in the future.”

Since then, the university has taken steps to name a new dean.

The first step of the process to replace Wearden is to select an interim dean for CCI.  Todd Diacon, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Kent State, said an interim dean is anticipated to be selected in the next few weeks.

“As provost, I will name an interim dean,” Diacon said.  “I will meet first with the College of Communication and Information College Advisory Committee (CAC), and I will ask them what they are looking for in an interim dean and what kind of talents and experience they are looking for.”

The CAC is a committee composed of four individuals, each representing one of the four different academic programs in CCI: Communication Studies, Journalism and Mass Communication, Library and Information Science and Visual Communication Design.

Jan Leach, associate professor of journalism and mass communication and the alternate JMC representative for the college’s advisory committee, said the committee gathered in a brief and confidential meeting on March 5.  She said a final decision on who would fill the interim dean position was not made.

After an interim dean is selected, Diacon said he anticipates that a search committee for the new permanent dean will be formed this fall.

“I suspect strongly that we will run the search next year,” Diacon said. “If we run the search next year in the early fall semester, we will put together a search committee.”

Diacon said he believes a new permanent dean will be announced in the spring semester in 2015 and that individual will take over on July 1, 2015.

For more information about the College of Communication and Information, visit http://www.kent.edu/cci/.

Contact Nicholas Sewell at [email protected].