Chris Wells appointed new vice president for communications and strategic development

By: Jonathan Batuello

Posted: 2/26/10

Call him the jack-of-all trades vice-president. Since coming to DePauw, Christopher Wells has already served as President Brian Casey's chief of staff and interim vice president for admissions and financial aid.

Now, Wells will be taking over a more permanent role as vice president for communications and strategic development on March 1, but that's not it. He will also serve as interim vice president for development and alumni relations, replacing Lisa Hollander, who has been named vice president for resource planning and senior philanthropic advisor.

"It became clear to me that we have multiple offices involved in communications, and the best way to communicate to the world both internally and externally was to bring all these communications together, with a real particular emphasis on the external side," said Casey.

Wells position as vice president for communications and strategic development is a new position created by Casey. The position will have two main functions - to coordinate and lead the offices and positions involved in external communications and to lead efforts involving strategic planning that involve the faculty and staff, such as the intellectual life conversations.

"We will look to more aggressively shape the narrative that is more forward looking about DePauw," said Wells. "There are so many things going on here, like campus planning and intellectual life discussions, and we will be in a position to express those things across various kinds of media."

To help Wells with these tasks, Casey also announced the hiring of DePauw alumni Jon Coffin, who graduted in 2006. Coffin, who currently serves as press secretary for Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito and he, will assume the role of director of strategic communications on March 1. Coffin's position is also new position within the university.

"It's not that we are adding a lot of senior positions at the end of the day," Casey said. "Once we go through all these transitions, it will be a staff position neutral restructuring, and I really have to communicate to the faculty that this is not an expanding staff."

Casey said a national search for the vice president of development and alumni relations has already began, and that he has full confidence Wells can handle both the positions for the time being.

"The external functions of development and alumni relations were so closely aligned to what Christopher would be doing with communications, it seemed more rational to, for a period, keep these functions together and coordinated," he said.