Appointment of Dean of School of Communication, Information and Library Studies

May 22, 2008
 

Members of the Rutgers Community:

It is my pleasure to announce the appointment of Jorge Reina Schement, Ph.D., a distinguished scholar in the field of communication and information policy, as dean of the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies (SCILS), effective July 1, 2008. Dr. Schement will succeed Dean Gustav Friedrich, who has served with distinction as dean since 1998.

Dr. Schement, who was on the SCILS faculty from 1987 to 1996, returns to Rutgers from Penn State University, where he has held the titles of Distinguished Professor of Telecommunications and codirector and cofounder of the Institute for Information Policy. Dr. Schement is a Faculty Fellow of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. The author or editor of 10 books, he has served on the editorial boards of seven academic journals and is editor-in-chief of Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of Communication and Information. He has held positions at Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin, the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, and the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at UCLA. Dr. Schement served as the director of the Federal Communications Commission’s Information Policy Project in 1994, has been adviser to the American Library Association, and is the author of the telecommunications policy agenda for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

A graduate of Southern Methodist University, Dr. Schement earned his Ph.D. in communications at Stanford and his M.S. at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His research and scholarship have focused on the social and policy consequences of the production and consumption of information, with a special interest in policy as it relates to ethnic minorities.

The members of the dean search committee, chaired by Dean Jim Hughes, have my sincere thanks for their dedicated work, which has produced an excellent result. Dr. Schement’s academic credentials, his strong record of research, his extensive contributions to national public policy discussions, and his enthusiastic vision for the school make him the ideal person to lead the School of Communication, Information and Library Studies into the future.

Please join me in welcoming Jorge Schement to the deanship of SCILS and welcoming him back to the Rutgers community.

Richard L. McCormick
President
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey