Chair

Teresa (Terry) Flannery
Vice President for Communication
American University

Terry Flannery has worked in higher education marketing for two decades. She is American University's first Vice President for Communication. She established a full communications and marketing organization and program, beginning with market research to inform the brand strategy. Flannery's team developed the American Wonk campaign to establish AU's distinctive brand position, raise awareness and build support for the University's major goals.

Flannery's responsibilities also include management of publications, media and public relations, web communications and digital media. She leads a campus-wide committee that completely redesigned the University's award winning website and robust social media presence, and is currently tackling the challenge of mobile access. In three years, American has earned five Tellys, several CASE Awards, and top recognition from eduStyle, the University College Design, and the American Association of University Photographers.

Prior to her appointment at American, Flannery built a nationally recognized higher education marketing and communications program at the University of Maryland as assistant vice president, where she led the team that created the Fear the Turtle campaign. She also held positions in admissions and student affairs at Maryland, and was affiliate assistant professor in the College of Education.

With expertise in marketing, branding, marketing research and assessment, Flannery is a frequent speaker and consultant for higher education organizations. She is a member of the CASE Communications Commission and has served as chair of the CASE Institute for Integrated Marketing and Branding as well as faculty for the CASE Institute for Senior Communications and Marketing Professionals. She is chair of the planning committee for the American Marketing Association's Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education.

Flannery holds a B.A. in English and Master's and Ph.D. in College Student Personnel Administration, all from the University of Maryland.

Faculty

Larry D. Lauer
Vice Chancellor for Government Affairs
Texas Christian University (TCU)

Larry D. Lauer is a pioneer in integrated marketing and strategic communication for academic institutions and nonprofit organizations. From 1999 to 2009 he served as TCU's first vice chancellor for marketing and communication, and was the executive director of its strategic planning initiative, The Commission on the Future of TCU. In 2009 he became TCU's first vice chancellor for government affairs. In addition, he is a distinguished professor of strategic communication at TCU's Schieffer School of Journalism and an adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. Currently he also serves as strategic marketing adviser to the American Council on Education.

Lauer came to TCU on the faculty in 1966. He began 30 years of directing TCU's communications and marketing programs in 1979, which included adapting the field of integrated marketing to higher education, teaching media studies, teaching strategic and international communication, public broadcasting projects and international education.

Lauer speaks at national and international conferences, counsels with associations, and has worked with more than 40 campuses on integrated marketing and strategic communication initiatives in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Columbia, South Africa, the Caribbean, the U.K, Poland, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Australia, Denmark, The Netherlands, and Singapore. His international experience includes serving seven years on the board of INPUT, an international public television producers' association. He also served seven years on the board of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education.

He is the author of four books and has written more than 30 journal articles and book chapters on institutional marketing and communications. He received CASE's Alice L. Beeman Award for Research in Communications and Marketing twice, and is also the recipient of a Distinguished Achievement Award from CASE District IV and the ICUT President's Award from the Independent Colleges and Universities of Texas.

Lauer was founding chair of the international CASE Assembly in 2006, now named the Summit for Advancement Leaders, which annually examines the impact of the dramatic changes in higher education on the advancement professions. He was also the founding chairman of CASE's Advanced Seminar on Integrated Marketing in Higher Education, and served on the advisory board of the American Council on Education's Solutions for America project. He has been a faculty member and past chair of the CASE Summer Institutes in Communications and Marketing.

Sarah Morris
Assistant Vice Chancellor for Communications
University of Missouri, Kansas City

At the University of Missouri - Kansas City, Sarah Morris is responsible for marketing and brand management, publications, web communications and KCUR 89.3 FM, the university's NPR station. Her 20 years of combined experience in business and higher education provide the foundation for her expertise in strategic communications, integrated marketing, business operations, profit and loss management, and training and development. She received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colo., and a master's degree in business administration from Baker University.

Sarah serves as a member of the Communications and Marketing Commission for the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). She also serves on the CASE District VI board of directors and the board of the Kansas City Sports Commission's WIN for KC.

Diane M. Weathers
Assistant Vice President, Communications & Marketing
Bronx Community College

Diane Weathers is an accomplished communications professional with a background in magazine journalism, public affairs, media relations, and higher education marketing and communications. In June 2012, she was named assistant vice president for Communications and Marketing at Bronx Community College, the oldest of the seven community colleges within the City University of New York. She previously spent nearly four years as the senior vice president of Communications and Advancement at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, a public academic medical center with eight schools and a teaching hospital located on five campuses across the State. Prior to that, she served five years as editor-in-chief of Essence magazine.

Weathers has spent most of her career as a consumer magazine writer and editor. This includes eight years with Newsweek in its New York headquarters, and later as a correspondent in the Washington, D.C. bureau. She has had several stints with Essence. Among her accomplishments as chief editor was launching the magazine's "Take Back the Music" campaign, a critical examination of the misogyny rampant in hardcore rap music. The campaign generated global media attention and led to her guest appearances on the Oprah Show and at a special Town Hall meeting televised on the Black Entertainment Network.

Her public affairs work includes five years with the United Nations World Food Program, the relief agency assisting poor nations impacted by civil strife or natural disasters. Based in the Program's Rome, Italy headquarters, she handled media inquiries, wrote extensively on WFP operations, served as media spokesperson and organized press visits to relief operations in Sub Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia.

At UMDNJ, she oversaw rebranding efforts, strengthened the University's visual identity guidelines, revamped the University news service to generate more national media coverage, developed more effective internal communications tools and spearheaded the University's first social media policy. She also helped shape an effective crisis communications strategy. In 2011, she was appointed to a three year term on the Council for Advancement and Support of Education Commission on Marketing and Communications, a subgroup of leaders in the field who meet periodically to review and develop best practices.

Weathers was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York and attended Syracuse University where she earned a Bachelor's Degree in Journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Communication. She was appointed a Trustee of the University in 2006 and serves on the academic and student affairs committees. She enjoys fine art, travel and music and is President of the Syracuse University Alumni Jazz Appreciation Society.

Institute Keynote Speaker

Jeffrey Selingo
Editor at Large
The Chronicle of Higher Education

Jeffrey Selingo is a leading authority on higher education worldwide, offering insights on the college of future—how families will pay, what campuses will look like, and how students will learn and prove their value in the job market.

Selingo is editor at large of The Chronicle of Higher Education. He writes a regular blog and column for The Chronicle and The Huffington Post called "Next" where he explores innovation in higher education.

From 2007 until 2011, he was editor of The Chronicle, where he had worked for 14 years in a variety of reporting and editing roles. His work has been honored with awards from the Education Writers Association, Society of Professional Journalists and the Associated Press, and he was a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.

Selingo is a senior fellow at Education Sector, an independent education think tank in Washington, D.C.

He has been a featured speaker before dozens of national higher-education groups and appears regularly on regional and national radio and television programs, including NPR, ABC and CBS. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

Selingo is currently working on his first book, College (Un)Bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students, which will be published by Amazon and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the spring of 2013.

He received a bachelor's degree in journalism from Ithaca College and a master's degree in government from the Johns Hopkins University.

Institute Guest Speaker

Larry Hincker
Associate Vice President for University Relations
Virginia Tech

Larry Hincker has been with Virginia Tech since 1988, and served as head of university relations since 1989.

Hincker is responsible for all communication activities for the university. These include functional areas of media relations, college communications, development communications, television productions, publications, marketing, web communications, trademarks and licensing and the public radio station for Central and Southwest Virginia, WVTF. His department has been recognized many times for communications excellence. In the past 15 years, they garnered more than 90 CASE District III and National awards, 22 ADDY awards and nine regional Edward R. Murrow awards.

He serves as the university spokesperson and senior communications official responsible for marketing, public relations, issues management, and institutional positioning, including the university-wide branding effort, Invent the Future.

Hincker was the university spokesperson and public face of Virginia Tech as it dealt with the largest media gathering on any university campus after the horrific murders of April 16, 2007. He has shared memories and lessons of these experiences with emergency planning and communications professionals around the world speaking several dozen times in the U.S., Canada, England, and New Zealand. Leading the communications unit at Virginia Tech for almost 25 years, Hincker has troves of "issues management" experience.

Before coming to Virginia Tech, Hincker worked 14 years in various corporate communications positions including manager of Public Information for a division of Westinghouse in Washington state and Employee Communications Manager for a division of Rockwell International. He was Visual Communications Manager for a Washington state utility.

Hincker holds a bachelor's degree from Brooks Institute and a master's degree from Virginia Tech.