Weeks after announcing that the Walter Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan was moving to the University of the Pacific this summer, Cronkite announced Monday that Associate Dean Mark Lodato was named dean of the S.I. Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University.
Lodato, who has worked at the Cronkite School since 2006, will join Syracuse starting July 1, 2020.
“The Newhouse School is a global leader in communication, with a rich history of excellence stretching back more than 100 years,” Lodato said in ASU’s press release Monday. “I am humbled to follow in the footsteps of such innovative leaders like Lorraine Branham and David Rubin. With a world-class faculty and unrivaled alumni support, I believe Newhouse students are poised for great success in the years ahead.”
Lodato, before his career at Cronkite, was an “Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter, political correspondent and anchor at network affiliates in Phoenix, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Ft. Myers, Florida,” according to the release.
According to the press release, Lodota became assistant dean in 2017 and later became associate dean in 2017.
He co-wrote the textbook “News Now: Visual Storytelling in the Digital Age,” taught JMC 110, and helped create partnerships with “NBC News, CBS News, ABC News, Univision, Fox Sports Arizona, Pac-12 Networks, E.W. Scripps Co., TEGNA and Meredith Corporation.” This experience, according to Callahan, is what made Lodato so valuable at the Cronkite school.
“Mark Lodato has been a central figure in the success of the Cronkite School for more than a decade, demonstrating every day his genuine passion for our disciplines, an impressive ability to think strategically and tactically, and an unwavering dedication to students and faculty alike,” Callahan, who has worked with Lodato in downtown Phoenix for 17 years, said in the release.
Lodato’s other accomplishments at the Cronkite school are noted by his students, who he also worked with. Junior Patty Vicente has worked with Lodato for two years. In her job as a Cronkite Ambassador, Vicente helps recruit freshmen alongside Lodato. While working with him, Vicente said Lodato made himself continuously available to both old and new students as well as faculty.
“He is kind of the first base perspective-students see when they visit the Cronkite school,” she said. “He has always been like a dad for us, and I feel like many of my coworkers would say that. He’s always been that person that we can always go to, whether it’s stuff about journalism, about Cronkite, or just about life in general.”
With his legacy Vicente wants Lodato’s career at the Cronkite school to encourage others to be open with students.
“Other schools don’t do what Cronkite does in making their deans so accessible. I think that is something that is really amazing at our school,” Vicente said. “I just hope that Dean Lodato going to Syracuse means that (he) is going to encourage others at that school, and that will encourage other deans from other schools to make themselves more accessible.”
In addition to his career, Vicente said Lodato was a person she, along with other students, could always rely on and that she would miss knowing that his door was “always open.” Although it is sad that he is leaving, Vicente said that she always knew he “was destined for bigger and better things.”
“It is for the best, even though it may not feel like that right now because we are losing someone as amazing as him. But it is for the best for how it can transform how dean are at other campuses, and hopefully they take a page out of our book for prospective students.”
Contact the reporter at ldiethel@asu.edu
Lisa Diethelm is the Politics editor for the Downtown Devil while she studies at The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in downtown Phoenix. She grew up in California and started her journalism career in high school.
