About the College
Past Deans
Terry Hynes, 1994-2006
Dean Emerita Dr. Terry Hynes is now senior vice chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Dr. Hynes stepped down as dean in 2006 to serve for a year as an assistant vice president for University Relations. In 2007-2008, she was public outreach director for The Documentary Institute. She retired from UF in 2008.
Under her direction as dean, the College:
- Increased the number of full-time faculty to 70 from 60, including doubling the size of the Public Relations department.
- Added programs such as the Documentary Institute, the Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project and the Florida Fly-Ins; new specialties in science/health communication, political communication, and international communication; and a new master’s degree in advertising.
- Attracted almost $70 million in private funds, contracts, and grants and raised the market value of the College's endowments from $12 million to $45 million.
Read more about Hynes' tenure as dean in the Spring 2006 issue of communigator.
Ralph Lowenstein, 1976-1994
Dr. Ralph L. Lowenstein, dean emeritus and associate director of the Interactive Media Lab, was one of the first journalism educators to write about the electronic newspaper. In Media, Messages and Men, which he co-authored in 1971 with John C. Merrill, he predicted the "personal retrieval stage" of mass communication in which any person would be able to retrieve an infinite amount of material of specialized interest from central computers. As dean of the College, he directed the college into several "firsts":
- The first school to run a continuously-updated cable text newspaper (with Cox Communications) in the early 1980s.
- The first school to install a large, integrated PC network (some 400 computers) in the mid-1980s.
- And the first school to produce a city-wide, continuously-updated electronic newspaper (with the Gainesville Sun and the New York Times Company) in the mid-1990s.
You can E-mail Dr. Lowenstein at rlowenst@jou.ufl.edu, or reach him by telephone or fax at (352) 392-6525.
 John Paul Jones, Jr. Dean, 1968-1976 |
 Rae O. Weimer Director and Dean, 1949-1968 |
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