May 16 — Permanent deans set to begin work in June have been appointed to the College of Communication and the School of Social Work, Boston University officials announced this week.
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Tom Fiedler, a former executive editor of The Miami Herald and a visiting professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, assumes the top leadership position in COM following nearly three years with interim Dean Tobe Berkovitz at the helm.
Gail Steketee’s promotion to SSW dean comes after she spent nearly three years working as interim dean for the school of just under 350 graduate students. Following two national dean searches, Steketee, an obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety disorders researcher, stepped into a permanent role.
Fiedler, who earned a master’s degree in journalism from COM in 1971 and has served on the university Board of Overseers since 2006, worked as an investigative reporter, columnist, editorial page editor and executive editor for The Herald. Fiedler helped the newspaper win a Pulitzer in 1991 with his investigative reporting for a series on a religious cult, and was part of the team that picked up a Pulitzer in 1993 for Hurricane Andrew coverage.
As Herald executive editor, Fiedler pushed for reporters to consider web content as on par with the print edition. In an April 2006 memo to staffers, he wrote, “Every job in the newsroom — EVERY JOB — is going to be redefined to include a web responsibility and, if appropriate, radio.”
Fiedler’s knack for multimedia and Internet-based journalism is an asset to BU, Provost David Campbell said in an email. At the Kennedy School, Fiedler is a visiting professor studying the impact of new media on the presidential campaign at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.
Journalism department Chairman Lou Ureneck said multimedia journalism will be a focus of upcoming changes to the department curriculum, and Fiedler will be pressed to upgrade COM facilities to accommodate changing media technology.
The “first challenge” Fiedler will face as dean is fund raising, Ureneck said. “The second challenge would be fund raising. And the third challenge would be fund raising. We need a new building. We need a lot of new equipment,” he said.
Ureneck, who said he is “elated” the university picked Fiedler to lead the college, said advancements at COM were delayed during recent leadership shakeups.
“I think we’ve been in a holding pattern since John Schulz left. There have been no new initiatives,” he said. “I think this is true of any college. When you’re waiting for a dean typically things are put on hold.”
The last five years have been marked by an ever-changing presence in the COM dean’s office. In May 2003, Brent Baker, pressured by the university administration, including then-Chancellor John Schulz, resigned after 11 years as dean. Baker’s remarks at COM commencement and conflicts over curriculum prompted his resignation, officials said.
John Schulz, a former chairman of the mass communication, public relations and advertising department, stepped up as interim dean and was then made permanent after a one-year contract. In October 2006, Schulz resigned following an investigation into his conduct at BU, including allegations of embellishments to his resume and plagiarism in a class lecture.
Mass communication professor Tobe Berkovitz took up the dean’s role after Schulz stepped down. Berkovitz said he worked to reach out to alumni and students during his one and a half years as interim dean.
Frequently seen around COM with his golden retriever Chance, Berkovitz said during his tenure as dean he found COM to be “a great college with wonderful students and excellent faculty and a strong and enthusiastic alumni base.” Following the leadership changes, Berkovitz faced a sometimes divided faculty.
“As dean I was focused on the future, and that was really my priority,” Berkovitz said.
During Berkovitz’s term as interim dean, the journalism faculty proposed the department split from COM and form a standalone school. An external review chaired by Fiedler recommended the journalism department ultimately become its own school among a “loose federation” within COM, Ureneck said. This arrangement would help the department fund raise, he said.
Fund raising was a major concern for Berkovitz, and he cited the need to upgrade the COM building and classroom technology as challenges for Fiedler.
“One of the things we’ve worked on over the last several years is keeping in touch with our alums,” he said. “We bring them back to COM frequently; we’re going to see them.”
Despite Berkovitz’s recent leadership, Ureneck said the five years he has taught at COM since leaving The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he was deputy managing editor, have been “a very bumpy period.”
“There’s been tumult and a kind of lack of coherence, controversy,” he said. “And so hopefully we’re moving into a period of strong, principled, enlightened leadership that will allow the various programs here to flower.”
Campbell said permanent leadership allows schools to focus on their own goals. Recruiting permanent deans allows Campbell and Brown “to establish a stable senior leadership team and thus better execute the university’s strategic plan,” Campbell said.
Brown’s 10-year strategic plan calls for extensive campus development and a 100-professor faculty expansion in the College of Arts and Sciences, which filled its dean position last May with former University of Wisconsin Vice Provost Virginia Sapiro.
President Robert Brown’s transition into the top spot at BU in September 2005 in part explains why there have been many interim deans in the recent past, Campbell said.
With the conclusion of the School of Education dean search in March and University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Hardin Coleman poised to take over for SED interim Dean Charles Glenn for the 2008-09 academic year, BU has secured the administration of three schools, making good on November predications search committee chairs made that the schools would have permanent leadership after this academic year.
The Goldman School of Dental Medicine, the College of Fine Arts and the School of Theology remain without permanent deans.
