Texas dean pursues Research VC post

by Daniel J. Fitzgibbons, Chronicle staff

he committee conducting a search for a vice chancellor for Research announced this week that a sixth candidate, Ellen Wartella, dean of the college of communication at the University of Texas at Austin, will visit campus April 16-17.

     Wartella has served in her current post since 1993. She is also a professor in the department of radio-television-film, where she holds the Walter Cronkite Regents Chair in Communication and the Mrs. Mary Gibbs Jones Centennial Chair in Communication.

     Prior to joining the Texas faculty, she was a visiting professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1992-93 and from 1979-93, held several posts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, including research assistant professor, research associate professor and university scholar and research professor at the Institute of Communications Research. She was also an assistant professor of communication and adjunct assistant professor in the school of journalism at Ohio State University from 1976-79.

     She has written and edited several books on mass media effects on children and is the co-principal investigator on a five-year, multi-site research project titled "Children's Research Initiative: Children's Digital Media Centers," funded by the National Science Foundation. As a consultant to the Federal Communications Commission, Federal Trade Commission and Congressional investigations of children and television issues, she has been an advocate for better programming for children.

     An open meeting with Wartella is scheduled for Wednesday, April 16, 3-4 p.m. in 917 Lincoln Campus Center.

     A copy of her curriculum vitae and evaluation forms will be available at the forum for participants to provide comments to the search committee.

     The other candidates are Joseph I. Goldstein, dean of the College of Engineering; Rathindra Bose, vice president for research and dean of graduate studies at Kent State University; Amar Gupta, co-director of the PROFIT Initiative at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Rahmat Shoureshi, associate vice president for technology transfer at Colorado School of Mines; and Harris Pastides, interim vice president for research at the University of South Carolina.