Dean Emily T. Metzgar: 'The Bellisario College just always rises to the top'

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — As she prepares to start her first academic year at Penn State leading the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, Dean Emily T. Metzgar discusses what drew her to the program, its strengths, the future and more. She also discusses her background, Big Ten Conference similarities and, of course, the role of an academic dean.

What did you know about Penn State, and what prompted you to apply to be dean of the Bellisario College?

Metzgar: I knew the college had a tremendous reputation in the broader journalism and mass comm community. The faculty are ubiquitous at some of the major, academic conferences in the discipline — AEJMC, ICA, NCA. And BEA, of course. So, it was clear that this was a robust academic community.

From the students' side, it was also clear that the students were talented and successful through national awards and other markers of quality. The Bellisario College just always rises to the top. So, that was appealing to me, and through my interactions with faculty and leadership from the Bellisario College, it was clear that it was a community that is committed to preparing students for the industries.

You had visited campus long before the job was even open, right?

Metzgar: Yes, I had visited for the first time probably 10 years ago, as part of an AEJMC leadership mentorship training program. So that was the first time the Bellisario College was really on my radar, and it never left my radar. Then the more I learned as I was doing my homework in giving serious consideration to applying, it was just so impressive.

What did your homework entail?

Metzgar: I dug in and looked at past self-studies for ACEJMC, for example, and I looked carefully at what kinds of awards the students had been winning over the years. Looking at the website, it was almost overwhelming with with the information and excitement that was provided there. And I loved seeing the language on the homepage: 'Big School Resources, Small School Feel.' That really resonated with me.

Why did it resonate with you?

Metzgar: That is so important. As a student, as a creature of the Big Ten myself, having done my undergrad at Michigan, having spent 12 years on faculty at IU, I know how important it is to find your people on a campus with tens of thousands of people. And the fact that the Bellisario College leans into being that community and providing that safe space for students was incredibly appealing to me.

There’s a difference between preparing and applying. When was the moment you knew you really wanted the job?

Metzgar: I think reading the position profile that had been provided by the search firm, talking with the leaders of the search firm team, getting a sense of what the search committee said it was looking for in a new dean. Then talking with other people, friends of friends who have connections to Penn State and to the Bellisario College, I did my due diligence and as I was preparing I just got more and more excited about all the ways that my professional and academic experiences really aligned with what the college was looking for in the new dean.

Who was the first person, or who were the first people, you told when you accepted the position?

Metzgar: Well, first, when I was offered the position, I was, sworn to confidentiality for a period and that was very difficult. When I worked for the State Department, I had a top-secret clearance. I know how to keep a secret, but this [the position offer], this was hard to keep secret. I was visiting with my mom when I got the offer. I told my mom. I told my long-term boyfriend, partner, about it, and I told my current dean, who is also a friend and a mentor. We had worked together at Indiana University. She's the reason that I made the leap from Indiana University to Kent State. So, I shared it with her, not only because she's a trusted friend and mentor, but also because this was going to have ripple effects for her, for the months ahead and years ahead, and I wanted to make sure that she had as much runway as possible to make the transition.

When it was announced, I was at ASJMC, the Association of Schools of Journalism and MassCom. I was in Chicago, and it was wonderful to be able to start telling people. My former dissertation committee member and mentor and friend, Dave Kirpius at University of Missouri, was one of the first people I ran into. And he was so excited. So, it was wonderful to have the opportunity to share the news in person with so many people that I care about and who have been so incredibly supportive of me.

You don’t build a network like that and the connections you have without being good at dealing with people. Along with that, what are you best at? What do you consider your strengths?

Metzgar: I care deeply about what I do, both at the institutional level and then at the national level and with the organizations where I have found a home. I just deeply appreciate friendships and connections with people. I will say, going back to your question about who else did I tell, one of the best pieces of advice that Kirpius gave me as I was preparing for my visit to campus was to run your presentation past some trusted people. Make sure that the first time you deliver it is not in that auditorium. And so, I convened two different groups of friends who gave me wonderful advice.

I really like people, maybe that's what it boils down to. I really value relationships. I'm not a big social media person, but I rely on it to help maintain friendships with people that I don't get to see all the time.

What would freshman-year-of-college Emily be surprised about, if anything, about your career path?

Metzgar: Oh, freshman Emily would be stunned that I have ended up in academia and that I'm doing what I'm doing in this discipline. My interest from, I don't know, fourth or fifth grade was foreign policy, international affairs, national security issues. That really was what I was pursuing from my first day on campus at the University of Michigan, and through my time in Japan as a participant in the JET program, through my master's degree at the George Washington University in international politics and to joining the State Department.

Leaving Washington, D.C., for Louisiana was hard but there were family reasons, and I had a friend who pulled me aside before I left and said, ‘Girl, bloom where you're planted.’ And I just dug into building relationships and making friends and finding a way to contribute to the community where I was in northwest Louisiana. That started with writing an opinion column and then doing a blog and eventually a podcast.

Before I left D.C., I had been looking at doing a Ph.D. program and when I got to Louisiana, I decided I'm going to find the best Ph.D. program in the social sciences in Louisiana, and I'm going do it. And that was at the Manship School of Mass Communication at LSU. It was the perfect mix of what I had been doing, focused on foreign policy, and beginning to focus on public policy. It was a wonderful entree into meeting new people, very interesting people, so many characters.

What brought you back north?

Metzgar: As I was finishing my Ph.D., I got an offer to join the faculty at IU. It was a hard decision to leave but ultimately, I wanted to be closer to home. It was a chance to go back to the Big Ten, which was terrific. My family and my people are in the Midwest. I grew up in Michigan, and although I've got friends all over, they're concentrated, sort of, in the Upper Midwest. And, I haven't regretted making that choice at all.

How would you assess yourself as a faculty member?

Metzgar: My promise to myself as I started at IU was, I wanted to be the faculty member that I never had at University of Michigan. I loved my time at Michigan. The intellectual environment was incredible. The classes were really challenging. I made wonderful friends. So, I would never throw shade at Michigan or my Wolverines.

But I was in the political science department and the French department, both, near the top rankings nationally. And those were hardcore programs, and the faculty were hardcore researchers. So even when they were teaching classes there was not always a lot of attention to the freshman, or the sophomore, or even the upperclassmen, and I promised myself that at IU, I would be accessible. My door would be open. I would be answering emails. I would meet with students outside of office hours, and I would really work to try to connect with my students every step of the way.

How did it go?

Metzgar: You know, sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. When I first started at IU, I participated in a teaching fellowship program, and one of the instructors said something that has stuck with me all these years. She said sometimes, no matter how hard you work to support students, they're just not going live up to the expectations that you've set for them. They're not going go through the doors that you've opened for them. And she said, ‘My mantra is, I cheerfully embrace the choices you've made.’ And that, that sounded a little harsh to me.

But as I've thought about it over the years, that really is the approach that I think faculty need to take. We give our students everything we've got — from an intellectual standpoint, and in terms of really caring about them and being compassionate and offering them lots of opportunities to try to redeem themselves. Sometimes there are students who just choose not to take advantage of that, and I recognize there are a whole host of reasons why that happens.

Did that affect what you did in the classroom? Or with your career?

Metzgar: Very early on I decided that while I enjoy teaching, as I looked around at how a university operates, and as I looked around at administration, I thought this is a place where I think I have some things to contribute. So, I began looking for leadership opportunities along the way.

I've really enjoyed the leadership opportunities I've had, both at the institutions where I've been located, and then increasingly with national opportunities. A mentor I had suggested I get involved with some of the divisions and interest groups at AEJMC. I naturally sought out the International Communication Division.

In the ensuing years, it’s been a pleasure to serve in many roles with AEJ and, later, because of my role at Kent State, with ASJMC.

But, going back for a moment to my role as a member of the teaching committee for AEJ, and as chair, one of the things that I really worked on hard was to find a way to honor educators. There was no specific award. When I was on the board as chair of the teaching committee, I said, you know, we really should have an in-house teaching award. When I first pitched it, there wasn't a whole lot of interest, but it started the conversation. And I'm happy to report that in the intervening years, it's been, what, probably six years now, seven years, this is the first year AEJMC is going to be awarding its own teaching award. It really drives home for me, and this it honestly is true — it's a cliché but it’s true — that it does not matter who gets the credit. Let’s just do good work and not care who gets the credit.

You've talked about your Big Ten roots and experience. Is there a shared DNA among those institutions?

Metzgar: I've never thought about it explicitly. When I took the job at IU, I joked, I'm going back to my people. Even though realizing that every institution is different, and truly south central Indiana, in many ways, is more southern than it is northern.

I mean, every one of these campuses has its own personality. But I think the size, and I think with some of them being land-grant institutions, that’s a shared characteristic. Also, I think ‘Midwest nice’ is really a thing.

Plus, there’s family tradition. A lot of students come from a family where it is assumed that if they’re going to pursue a college education, it’s often just the assumption that you are at least going to aim to try to get into Ohio State or Penn State or IU or Purdue. You go shopping and you can get toddler-sized cheerleading outfits. It’s ingrained early.

How many miles a week do you need to get out and hike to feel good?

Metzgar: Gosh, I need to get in so many miles to feel like I'm really getting out of the office. But five miles is always a good number. Going out into the woods is absolutely my attitude adjustment.

I am judgy when I see people out on the trail wearing, earbuds, though. I think, from a safety standpoint, it's not great. You need to be aware of your environment, but also, I like watching the seasons change on some of my favorite trails, listening to the frogs, seeing the skunk cabbage start to grow, listening to the birds.

I just … I love it. When I was in Indiana, I earned the Indiana Master Naturalist certification, which is the, think of Master Gardener, but focused on things like, birds and plants and topography and trees and mushrooms. I mean, the fungus thing was so interesting. I had no idea — this whole world of mushrooms. They're amazing.

What does your media consumption look like on a daily or weekly basis?

Metzgar: I listen to a lot of podcasts. I try to practice what I preach to students regarding media literacy. So, it’s a wide diet. In the political environment that we're in right now, the only way to get at truth or some relatively accurate sense of what we think we know about what's going on in the world right now, is to just read widely, to listen widely. And so, I will listen to, things across the political spectrum. Right now, I'm really digging in on a lot of the tech stuff. I'm fascinated by AI, not just by the tech and by its applications, but by its social implications. One of my favorite podcasts on that front is Hard Fork. It's one of the New York Times tech podcasts. It's funny, and it's interesting.

There's a podcast called Moonshots, run by a guy named Peter Diamandis, who is an exceptional self-promoter, and he and his friends have exceptionally high opinions of themselves and their abilities to influence the world, but they're also buddies with Elon Musk, and with a lot of other people, leaders of some of the frontier AI operations, so there's a lot of intel about what's going on. So, I appreciate listening to that.

And then, if you were to look at my YouTube channel, it is all over the place. One of my favorites right now, and I recommend it, is ‘What's Going On With Shipping?’ It's by a guy named Sal Macagliano. When I first encountered him several years ago, he was being interviewed by a Bloomberg team for their podcast, Odd Lots. They interviewed him after that ship hit the bridge, in Baltimore Harbor, and I thought, this guy is interesting. He has more than half a million subscribers. He posts almost every day about the shipping industry, the maritime shipping industry. Who knew? As a public policy geek, I found it fascinating.

Toughest one for last. What do you consider to be the role of a dean?

Metzgar: I think the one off the top of my head is keep the trains running on time. Don't micromanage. Make sure you've got professionals in place and then get out of the way and let them do their work. Be the one who is available to help. Advocate for faculty and staff when they're trying to get something done that they should be able to get done, and they can't get it done.

Being an advocate for the faculty is especially important, and when I say that I'm talking about helping tenure-line faculty successfully navigate the tenure process. That process is, no matter how clear university documentation is, no matter how clear college documentation is, there is so much that is sort of unwritten about what that process is like, and what expectations are, and what good advice or bad advice for navigating it might be.

I take very seriously the responsibility of the unit head, and in this case, the dean, to provide support, to provide mentorship, to be available to meet regularly if colleagues are interested in it. You've hit this logjam. What can we do? You're having trouble getting this article placed? Let's talk about it.

I think there are parallels in supporting staff as well. Universities are hard for staff for lots of reasons, but often, there aren't necessarily clear paths for career advancement. Staff colleagues get hired into a particular role, and it can be hard to get promoted or to move from one kind of role to another. I believe in encouraging staff colleagues to seek additional training, to take time to pursue other interests. It makes me happy to see someone succeed.