Two new leaders in Marshall’s College of Arts and Media are excited about Marshall’s commitment to students and are putting plans into action.
By Jean Hardiman
MU Summer 2024
The two new leaders in Marshall’s College of Arts and Media come from different places both geographically and in terms of interests. But they both ended up at Marshall University and both had the same thing to say about the Marshall experience so far.
“I love the spirit. I wish I looked better in green,” said Dr. Maria Gindhart, dean of the College of Arts and Media since last summer, who came to Marshall after serving as the associate dean of the College of the Arts at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
Dr. Rob Quicke, the new director of the college’s W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications, was looking for a new chapter after serving as chair of the communication department at William Paterson University, a smaller institution in New Jersey, having been there 17 years.
“Out of all the places I was interviewing, Marshall University stood out because the warmth on campus was genuine,” said Quicke, who is from England and graduated from Oxford University, the University of London and Regent University in Virginia. “I really felt palpable school spirit here, which I didn’t at the other places I was interviewing. Plus, I already knew about Marshall’s brilliant reputation because WMUL-FM would win awards nationally and I would keep running into Dr. Charles Bailey at national conferences, as he and his students would win armfuls of trophies.
Everything I’ve experienced since I came here has only confirmed that initial impression that Marshall is genuinely special.”
Both new leaders have spent their first year getting to know Marshall and establishing plans on how to help the talented faculty and students already here make the university even better.
Gindhart began her career as a professor of art history and said she never had plans to become a university administrator.
“I planned to teach and do research. But I did a lot of service- and administrative-type roles, and a lot people don’t really want any of that. For whatever reason, I kind of enjoyed it and was kind of good at it,” said the Virginia native, who graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “As much as possible, I would like to free people up to do things that they want to do. I’m here to make things as good as possible for all the students, faculty and staff.”
She also wants to strengthen the arts and communication fields by helping the students in those programs.
“I think of arts, media and humanities all in a bundle and I think to some degree, they’re under attack in this country,” she said. “There is a place for everything. I want scientists and a well-trained doctor when I need a doctor, but I think the arts and media hold people together, and they can be incorporated into wellness. You can achieve wellness not just through medication, diet and exercising, but also through having creative outlets and being able to go to performances.”
At Marshall, one thing she’d like to do to enhance the student experience is cross-populate students in the different disciplines and get them into different spaces. The College of Arts and Media is home to the schools of Art & Design, Journalism, Music, and Theatre and Dance. The schools already collaborate some, she said, but she would like to see it happen more, which would help unify the college as well as give students more hands-on experience.
“For example, a graphic design class is doing posters for the theatre season, and those can be advertised through our journalism students,” Gindhart said. “Unifying and cross-collaboration, there are lots of opportunities.”
She’d also like to initiate a program to provide microgrants to students.
“In the arts, you have the extra costs: you want to do a special capstone project, but you don’t have the right kind of camera, or you need super big canvases or something like that,” she said. “Sometimes you’ve cobbled tuition together, but you can’t get over the finish line for those smaller amounts of money. I would love to do more to help with that here.”
Quicke brings a wealth of radio and journalism experience to Marshall, having started in
England in professional radio as well as producing material and story packages and interviews for the BBC and commercial radio.
“You could say I’m a radio guy at heart,” he said. “But I’ve done a lot of journalism as well. I have taught journalism as a guest lecturer at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai, India, for the last 25 years. I have taught and lectured all over the world. That’s partly because I founded World College Radio Day, a global event with over 1,000 participating university and college radio stations in 57 countries (www.collegeradio.org).”
He hopes to increase enrollment in Marshall’s journalism school.
“We’ve made good progress in the last year,” Quicke said. “We’ve got a brand-new podcasting studio that we have built and launched. We have a new TV and video production major. And we’re making common-sense curriculum changes such as merging advertising and public relations into one major, which just makes sense. So already, things have been moving at a very fast pace. Positive changes.”
What he likes most about Marshall, he said, are the people.
“The authenticity of the people who work here is remarkable,” Quicke said. “We have a worthy mission, and there is a sense we are all in this together.”
Gindhart said she’s thrilled to be at a university where faculty and administrators are invested in students’ lives.
“This is a place that gets a lot of first-generation students, a lot of Pell grants,” she said. “Here, we have some of the best and brightest, but they don’t necessarily have the means. With President Smith’s Marshall For All, Marshall Forever program, I’m coming to someplace that says, ‘We’re going to keep tuition as reasonable as possible and we are going to find a way — not for it to be free, but we recognize the need for an education to be debt-free, especially for students from West Virginia, Appalachia and the Tri-State region.’ It’s inspiring.”
She also likes the idea of “finding your herd.”
“If you’re living your passion, either through your major or your activities, you’re going to find your people, your herd,” she said. “It genuinely is your Marshall moment and your Marshall family. And there is a real dedication to teaching. Faculty across the board, they know their students. They’re going to go the extra mile for their students. They’re invested in them, and it doesn’t end when they graduate.”
