Inaugural Dean of the College of Design, Media and the Arts

of accomplished programs and an engaged academic community, creating a bold, shared vision that expands opportunities for students and faculty and elevates the College’s academic, creative, and public impact.

Effective fall 2027, the College will unite seven schools and the Kent State University Museum, serving more than 3,000 undergraduate and approximately 250 graduate students. It will encompass the School of Art, School of Fashion, School of Music, School of Theatre and Dance, School of Emerging Media and Technology, School of Media and Journalism, and School of Visual Communication Design. Together, these programs represent a remarkable breadth of scholarship, creative practice, performance, design, storytelling, research, professional preparation, and cultural engagement. Located on Kent State’s flagship campus in Kent, Ohio, the College will be positioned within Northeast Ohio, a region rich in cultural institutions, health care, industry, technology, and creative enterprise.

The College is emerging from Kent State’s Transformation 2028 initiative, through which the University has reimagined its academic structure to encourage greater collaboration, innovation, and long-term sustainability. Importantly, the inaugural Dean will not be asked to manage the operational mechanics of bringing the College together. Kent State is undertaking that work before the Dean arrives. The Dean’s charge is to build: to define the College’s identity, cultivate trust and shared purpose, strengthen the distinctive excellence of its disciplines and create new possibilities at their intersections. The College will also operate within a shared academic hub with the College of Architecture and Environmental Design, where interdisciplinary programming, shared staffing, collaborative research and creative activity are already underway. 

Reporting directly to the Executive Vice President and Provost, the Dean will serve as the College’s Chief Academic and Administrative Officer and provide strategic leadership across its academic, creative, financial, organizational and external affairs. The Dean will champion faculty excellence, research, scholarship, and creative practice; strengthen enrollment and student success; foster curricular and experiential innovation; and support meaningful collaboration across disciplinary boundaries. As one of Kent State’s most outward-facing academic enterprises, the College offers significant opportunities to deepen engagement with alumni, donors, industry, cultural organizations and community partners. The Dean will serve as a compelling advocate for the College, expanding philanthropic support and external partnerships while articulating the value of design, media, the arts, scholarship, creative practice, and cultural production. 

Kent State is one of Ohio’s leading public universities and a Carnegie R1 research institution, serving more than 33,000 students across an eight-campus system and supported by a global alumni community of more than 280,000. The University combines a longstanding commitment to access and student opportunity with strength in research, discovery, and creative activity. Its flagship campus in Kent offers the energy of a vibrant college town with access to the cultural, civic, health care, and economic centers of Northeast Ohio and the broader region.

For the inaugural Dean, this environment creates an unusually rich leadership opportunity. The next leader will have the latitude to build a College rather than simply inherit one, while benefiting from distinguished programs, talented faculty and staff, and an institutional structure designed to encourage collaboration across traditional boundaries. The Dean will embrace design thinking and human-centered problem solving, support thoughtful experimentation and help the College explore new programs, institutes, partnerships, research and creative initiatives and revenue opportunities. At the same time, the Dean must appreciate the distinctive identities, cultures, pedagogies and measures of excellence represented across the College, ensuring that interdisciplinarity strengthens rather than diminishes disciplinary depth.

The successful candidate will hold a doctoral degree or terminal degree from an accredited institution in one of the disciplines represented in the College, or demonstrate highly distinguished performance within one or more of the disciplines represented in the College. Candidates must have seven years of significant administrative experience in an academic setting, including experience as a faculty member and administrator at a level commensurate with a department chair or school director, and an academic record sufficient to qualify for faculty appointment at senior rank.

The next Dean will bring significant leadership experience, a deep appreciation for the breadth of scholarly and creative work represented within the College, strong financial and fundraising acumen and the ability to lead effectively within a complex public research university. The strongest candidates will be builders who combine strategic imagination with relational intelligence, transparency, empathy and a servant leadership orientation. They will empower talented people, navigate change with patience and courage and inspire a diverse community around a shared sense of possibility. This is a defining opportunity to create something consequential from the beginning: a College rooted in the excellence of its individual disciplines and strengthened by the connections among them.

A comprehensive leadership profile is forthcoming. Interested candidates and nominators are encouraged to contact us directly for additional information regarding the opportunity.

Applications should include, as separate documents, a CV or resume and a letter of interest addressing the themes in this profile.

WittKieffer is assisting Kent State University in this search. For fullest consideration, candidate materials should be received by October 30, 2026.

Application materials should be submitted using WittKieffer’s candidate portal.

Nominations and inquiries can be directed to Melody Rose, Ph.D., Bronwen Bares Pelaez, Ph.D., or Bree Liddell at KentStateDesignMediaArts@wittkieffer.com.

Statement of Commitment

As required by Ohio Revised Code section 3345.016, Kent State University will: educate students by means of free, open and rigorous intellectual inquiry to seek the truth; equip students with the opportunity to develop the intellectual skills they need to reach their own informed conclusions; not require, favor, disfavor or prohibit speech or lawful assembly; create a community dedicated to an ethic of civil and free inquiry, which respects the autonomy of each member, supports individual capacities for growth and tolerates differences in opinion; and treat all faculty, staff and students as individuals, hold them to equal standards and provide them equality of opportunity with regard to race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

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