Susan King to conclude her service as dean of the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media
King, who began her service as dean in January 2012 and has advanced the school in numerous ways during her decade as its leader, will remain in place until a successor is named.
Dear Carolina Community,
We are writing to share that Susan King, dean of the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media and the school’s John Thomas Kerr Distinguished Professor, will conclude her service as dean but will remain in place until a successor is named. A search will be launched this week.
Susan began her service as dean in January 2012 and has advanced the school in numerous ways during her decade as its leader. Her emphasis on creating experiential learning opportunities for students, increasing faculty support and upgrading facilities to reflect media innovation are among the reasons media and journalism is now the University’s second-largest major.
Under Susan’s leadership, the school surpassed its $75 million goal within the University’s $4.25 billion Campaign for Carolina and forged well-funded collaborations across campus and key partnerships with industry and peers. The industry-focused Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media and the interdisciplinary campus Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life were established during her tenure. Construction is nearly complete on the Curtis Media Center — an education technology hub with a media production facility and innovative lab and classroom spaces that encourage and enable collaboration.
Partnerships she created with Capitol Broadcasting Company locally and with Bloomberg nationally and internationally are contributing to diversity in the media and journalism industry. Susan brought the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting from Harvard University to UNC-Chapel Hill in 2019, elevating its work to increase and retain reporters and editors of color so that newsrooms are representative of the communities they serve.
In 2020, Susan was named the 2019 Scripps Howard Administrator of the Year by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication — the highest recognition for a dean in her field. Other recognitions include the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation, an organization she co-founded; the Earle Gluck Distinguished Service Award by the North Carolina Association of Broadcasters; and the DeWitt Carter Reddick Award for Communication Excellence from the Moody College of Communication.
She serves on boards for numerous organizations including North Carolina Public Radio, Carolina Beacon and the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs; she chairs the Hearst Journalism Awards Steering Committee and is a member of the University’s vice provost for enrollment search committee.
Over the last decade, the school has fostered student achievement at the highest levels. In six out of the past seven years, it won the Hearst National Championship, the most prestigious student journalism award in the country. Since 2016, more than 90% of undergraduate alumni are employed or have enrolled in further education within one year of their graduation. Graduate students have continued to excel and earn national recognition. Doctoral students have won the nation’s top mass communication research dissertation award four times since 2012.
Please join us in thanking Susan for her longstanding leadership and her service at Carolina.
We are committed to working together over the next several months to ensure a successful accreditation process for UNC Hussman and for a smooth transition to a new dean. We are appointing a committee to oversee a dean search, chaired by UNC School of Information and Library Science Dean Gary Marchionini. We are confident that under Gary’s leadership we will identify an outstanding dean to continue the great progress the school has made in recent years.
Sincerely,
Kevin M. Guskiewicz
Chancellor
Robert A. Blouin
Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost
