Sharon Wood, UT executive vice president and provost, announced via email Monday Rachel Davis Mersey’s appointment as interim dean of the Moody College of Communication starting June 1. This follows Dean Jay Bernhardt’s January announcement that he would be departing from the Forty Acres. 

Bernhardt said he would be leaving Moody at the end of the semester to become the 13th president of Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. 

Mersey joined the University in 2020 as an associate dean for research at Moody, where she  earned the Jesse H. Jones Centennial Professorship, which measures excellence in academic fields within the School of Journalism and Media, according to Wood. 

“I want to thank Dr. Mersey for her enthusiasm to lead Moody College until our national search for a permanent dean concludes,” Wood said in an email statement. “She cares deeply about the UT community, and I am confident she will continue to advance Moody College’s strategic plan priorities through the leadership transition.”