Indian American Prabu David Takes Over as Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at Rochester Institute of Technology
- Most recently, he served as vice provost for faculty and academic staff development, interim vice provost for Teaching and Learning Innovation, and dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University.
Indian American Prabu David moved this month from Michigan to Upstate New York to assume a new job — provost and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at Rochester Institute of Technology. David. Most recently, he served as vice provost for faculty and academic staff development, interim vice provost for Teaching and Learning Innovation, and dean of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University. He joined RIT on Aug. 1.
In a statement David said he is “looking forward to strengthening ties between the city and RIT’s academic mission through active outreach and engagement.” Noting that the university’s “commitment to experiential learning and student success immediately caught my attention,” he added that “the people-first emphasis in the strategic plan was a clear signal that the institution was driven by the right values.” He succeeds Ellen Granberg, “who stepped down at the end of June as RIT provost to become the 19th president of the George Washington University,” the university said.
According to the university, David was chosen after “a national search led by a committee of RIT faculty, staff, students, and trustees.” RIT President David Munson said he was selected “based on his reputation as a leader, collaborator, curricular innovator, and researcher.”
David served as dean of Michigan State’s College of Communication Arts and Sciences, and the award-winning WKAR radio and TV station for nearly nine years. In that role, “he oversaw a college with 3,700 students, 160 faculty members, 90 staff, and five academic departments,” RIT said. He helped develop the Media Greenhouse, “a collaborative space to integrate art, design, coding, motion capture, and AR/VR into the college.” Additionally, “he has fostered DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and interdisciplinary initiatives building strong ties among health colleges, engineering, social sciences, arts, and humanities.”
Before that he was professor and associate dean at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, “where he was instrumental in developing undergraduate and graduate programs, recruiting faculty, and developing the administrative framework of a newly founded college,” RIT said.
Before that, he was on the faculty at Ohio State University where he was assistant and associate professor, Director of Undergraduate Studies of the School of Communication, and Faculty Associate with OSU’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Center for Public Health Preparedness.
His research focuses on media and cognition with active projects in AI and leadership. He has served as an investigator or co-investigator on projects funded by the National Association of Broadcasters, National Cancer Institute, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of State, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. Over the years, he has won awards for research, teaching, and design.
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physics from Loyola College, Chennai, India, earned a master’s degree in journalism from Ohio University, and completed his doctoral degree in mass communication from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
