Kerwin Named Director of Communications

Bob Kerwin joins the Colorado College community in April as director of communications. As the college’s chief communication and marketing officer, Kerwin will lead the effort to create and implement a comprehensive, integrated strategic marketing communications program to enhance the college’s national reputation and standing.

Kerwin comes to CC after a distinguished career in international advertising, including stints with Ogilvy & Mather in Europe, J. Walter Thompson in Australia, and most recently TBWA/Worldwide in Korea and Japan. Kerwin is a Dartmouth College alumnus with an M.B.A. in international management and marketing from Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management.

Kerwin is eager to discuss his ideas and goals for CC:

What drew you to take a job in higher education, particularly at CC?

With two of my three teenage children doing their college searches over the past 18 months, I developed an almost hobbyist fascination with how colleges communicate. One day last summer, I realized I wanted to work in this area. I read Dick Celeste’s remarks on the Web site and thought: “Here’s someone who tells it like it is.” I had expected to discover a degree of passion when I visited CC, but what I encountered on campus was even stronger and wider than I had dared to hope. There aren’t enough people with passion on this planet, but CC seems to draw them like a magnet.

What do you predict for the job ahead?

My sense is that nonconventional solutions are required to cut through the immense noise surrounding the subject of colleges, and that CC has the right history of innovation and taste for pioneering to succeed.

What is the single most important goal you hope to achieve at CC?

The most important objective for me is to tap into the energy and freshness of current students as the CC community collaborates in speaking up and out as a group. I see communications as a challenge that should engage everyone from the CC community: past, present, and future. It will be my job to make our progress both tangible and measurable.

Do you have any other resolutions for the job?

By 2010, I would like to look back and see that we have set new standards for the college, achieving brighter visibility for CC in a global framework, with a great deal of fun, debate, and toil, and the teasing smile of outrageous fortune along the way.

A longer version of this story appears in the online edition of Access.