Kennesaw State University announced Tuesday that Dr. Pamela Whitten has been named president of Kennesaw State University by the Board of Regents.  She will start July 16. [Editor’s note: the original version of this article incorrectly stated that Dr. Whitten’s starting date was June 16.  Thanks to Tiffany Capuano of KSU’s Strategic Communications for pointing out the error]

Whitten comes to KSU from UGA

Whitten has been the Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at the University of Georgia since 2014.  According to a news release from KSU,

As UGA’s chief academic officer, Whitten oversees instruction, research, public service and outreach, student affairs and information technology — a portfolio that includes 17 schools and colleges with 37,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students. Among other initiatives, UGA during her tenure hired 56 new faculty to reduce class sizes for undergraduates, increased external research support 37 percent, added 30 endowed chairs and professorships and increased summer enrollment by 25 percent. The campus launched a new learning requirement to give undergraduates out-of-classroom experience through internships, research and other forms of experiential learning. According to the 2018 U.S. News and World Report rankings, UGA over the past three years has jumped from #21 to #16 among the top public universities in the nation.

Her career prior to UGA

Whitten’s area of expertise has been telemedicine, remote diagnosis and treatment of illness using telecommunication devices.

She worked as the director for telemedicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center. She later joined the faculty at Michigan State University, where she became the dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State.

According to the press release,

She is an internationally recognized expert in the field of telemedicine — the remote delivery of health care services and information — and has conducted research with nearly $30 million in funding from agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Commerce. She has co-authored two books and published more than 100 peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters.

Whitten’s academic background

She received a Bachelor of Science in Management in 1985 from Tulane University’s A.B Freeman School of Business.  In 1986 she received a Master’s degree in Communication from the University of Kentucky and in 1996 a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of Kansas.