THE COLLEGE OF NEW ROCHELLE APPOINTS JOHN PATTON ASSISTANT DEAN IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

NEW ROCHELLE, NY, July 24, 2006 -- The College of New Rochelle (CNR), announced the appointment of Dr. John Patton as Assistant Dean of the Art & Communication Studies Division of the Graduate School.  He assumed his new role on July 10, 2006.
   
“Dr. Patton brings to this position an accomplished and diverse history in the communications field,” said Dr. Guy Lometti, Dean of the Graduate School.  “We are confident that John’s leadership of the Art & Communication Studies programs will greatly benefit our current graduate students and that he will make significant contributions to both the development of new programs and the growth of the Graduate School.”

Dr. Patton leads an important division at CNR’s Graduate School which enrolls approximately 180 graduate students each year in four master’s and certificate degree programs in Art Education, Art Therapy, Studio Art, and Communication Studies. He is responsible for strategic planning, curriculum/program development and evaluation, and resource management.  He will also serve as a facilitator for faculty and students.
   
Dr. Patton’s research interests include: rhetorical criticism and theory, political communication, the rhetoric of civil rights, visual communication, persuasion, postcolonial theory and cultural communication.  He is an experienced presenter at the nation’s leading communications conferences, and his articles have appeared in dozens of academic journals and books.  Dr. Patton is a member of various professional associations such as the National Communication Association and Caribbean Studies Association, and has served on the editorial boards of a number of professional journals including the Central States Speech Journal and the Quarterly Journal of Speech.  He is currently serving as a Guest Editor for a Special Issue of the Southern States Communication Journal on the topic, “Communication and Hurricane Katrina.”

Formerly a member of the Department of Communication at Tulane University’s School of Liberal Arts in Louisiana for 22 years, Dr. Patton served as Department Chair at the institution from 1984-90.  Previously, he was a faculty member at Louisiana State University (1979-84), University of Illinois-Urbana (1975-79), and University of Georgia-Athens (1974-75).
   
Voted among Tulane University’s 15 Most Inspiring Undergraduate Professors for 2001, Dr. Patton has been recognized with a number of grants, honors and awards.  He was selected and participated in the summer 2005 Cornell University School of Criticism and Theory, received a 2002 research grant from the Roger Stone Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies to study calypso and culture in Barbados, and served as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in Practical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2002.  Dr. Patton spent 1993 as a Fulbright Scholar in the West Indies studying “Communication and Cultural Identity in the Caribbean.”
   
A graduate of the University of Kentucky with a bachelor’s degree in English, Speech and Drama, Dr. Patton also has a master’s degree in Homilectics and Philosophy from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Public Address from Indiana University.  Dr. Patton, a native of Kentucky, currently resides in New Rochelle, New York.