PULLMAN The field of candidates for the WSU vice president for university relations post has been narrowed to three Tim Pavish, Debra Townsend and Gene Sands.
Each of these candidates will be on campus for meetings and interviews in June.
Pavish’s sessions are scheduled for June 3. Townsend will be on campus June 10; Sands will be on campus on June 12. More details about their visitation schedules will be included in WSU Announcements.
Tim Pavish
Pavish has served as WSU’s interim vice president for University Relations since November, when he succeeded Sally Savage. He was named executive director of alumni relations and the WSU Alumni Association in 2003. Under his leadership, alumni association membership has risen by more than one-third, to the highest level in the organization’s history, in part as a result of enhanced membership benefits. The alumni association has become the nation’s fastest-growing among its peer institutions.
From 1990 to 2003, Pavish worked for DDB Worldwide, Inc. in Seattle, the largest communications agency in the state. Pavish served as managing partner of the agency from 1996 to 2003. In that role, he directed the advertising unit and worked with the president to manage the overall agency, which employed 165 and had $250 million in billings.
Pavish previously worked as an account manager at Elgin Syferd, Inc. in Seattle and as public relations manager for the Washington Apple Commission.
A Walla Walla native, Pavish earned his bachelor’s degree in communications from the Murrow School of Communication at WSU. He was inducted into the Murrow School of Communication Alumni Hall of Achievement in April 2008.
Debra Townsend
Since 1997, Townsend has led a Loudonville, N.Y., consulting firm, Communications on Demand, which works with a variety of clients, mostly in academia, but also in industry, government, religion, high-technology and health care. The firm provides guidance on communications and marketing issues, crisis communications, staff restructuring and recruiting, fundraising, enrollment management and related issues.
The firm’s clients have included the University of Maryland, Skidmore College, the State Universities of New York at Fredonia and Albany, the Air Force Academy, Cornell College and Bates College.
From 1995 to 1997, Townsend served as vice president for external relations at Bennington College, where she was involved in efforts to improve the college’s public image in the wake of a controversial 1994 decision to make deep budget cuts in the wake of falling enrollment. The college completed a successful fundraising campaign and saw a turnaround in enrollment during her tenure.
Townsend has also been director of news and communications at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and as director of the Senate Majority News Office in the State of Michigan. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Michigan State University.
Gene Sands
Sands served as executive director of university relations for Louisiana State University from 1998 to 2005. In that role, he was chief architect of the university’s comprehensive marketing communications plan, served as senior advisor to the chancellor on public relations and marketing issues and as chief spokesperson for the university.
He previously was executive director of public affairs for St. John’s University and the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., director of marketing for the Fairfax Network of Fairfax (Va.) Public Schools, and a deputy director in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) in the Pentagon.
He recently completed a book “Wally Boag: The Clown Prince of Disneyland” and plans to collaborate with the editor of a new Johns Hopkins text on higher education.
Sands earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s in public relations from the University of Oklahoma and a doctoral degree in educational administration in higher education from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
The search committee for the position is being headed by Howard Grimes, WSU vice president for research and dean of the graduate school.
