Dianne M. Lynch

Dianne became the 24th president of Stephens College in June 2009. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Mass Communication and Feminist History, and her Ph.D. in Art History and Communications from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where she studied feminist theory and social identity development among digital natives — children growing up online. Her most recent research, a national study of the future of American journalism and journalism education, commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, was released in February 2015.

Dianne is a member of the Board of Directors of the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication at Florida International University, the president of the American Midwest Conference (AMC) in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), a member of the Board of Directors of Providence Bank, and a peer reviewer for the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association. She has been active in a variety of local community organizations in Columbia, including the Hagan Scholarship Foundation, the United Way Board of Directors, the Cradle to Career initiative, and the CORE Board of Directors.

Dianne was dean of the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College from 2004 to 2009, and a faculty member and chair of the Department of Journalism at Saint Michael’s College in Burlington, Vermont, from 1989 to 2004. She was the 1999 National Journalism Teacher of the Year.

Dianne was the founding executive director of the national Online News Association. In that capacity, she was the editorial director of the first national study of the credibility of online news. She wrote a biweekly column, “Wired Women,” about women and technology, for ABCNews.com from 2000 to 2003, and a weekly column on new media ethics for The Christian Science Monitor from 1998 to 2002. She continues to write as a journalist, most recently for The Huffington Post.

Dianne and her husband, Philip Coleman, have four children: Andrew, Amelia, Nicholas and Annie. As avid animal lovers, Dianne and Philip enjoy their many dogs.