Seeger will succeed Dean Sharon L. Vasquez, who is stepping down to accept an appointment as provost of the University of Hartford. Dean Vasquez has led the College since May 2004.

Established in 1986, the College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts now serves more than 2,500 students majoring in 16 undergraduate and 13 graduate programs through its the departments of Art and Art History, Communication, Dance, Music and Theatre. The college's size, diversity and creative energy make it a major force in the life of Wayne State University and metropolitan Detroit.

Seeger has been a faculty member and administrator at Wayne State for 25 years. During that time he has been a department chair, graduate officer and assistant dean of the Graduate School. He also has advised more than 150 master's students and more than 30 Ph.D. dissertations. "Matt has been an outstanding leader at Wayne State, and I am gratified that he was willing to accept this new assignment," said Phyllis I. Vroom, acting provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.

Seeger's teaching and research interests are in areas of crisis and emergency risk communication. He has conducted extensive work in crisis communication is public health settings, and the role of mass media in crisis, including outreach to minority and special needs populations, development of models of risk and crisis communication, and the role of public health in the first-responder community. He has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on issues of pandemic influenza preparedness including the development and refinement of the CDC's Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication model that is now used to guide all federal public health responses to emergencies. He is an advisor to the CDC's Emergency Communication Division and a member of "Team B," an external group providing advice on the CDC's response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He also has worked with the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, a Department of Homeland Security Center for Excellence on issues of food safety and models of food recalls.

His work on communication risk and crisis management has appeared in the Handbook of Crisis and Risk Communication, International Encyclopedia of Communication, Journal of Health Communication Research, Communication Yearbook, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Communication, Management Communication Quarterly, and the Journal of Applied Communication Research, among others. His books include Effective Crisis Communication (Sage, 2007) Crisis Communication and the Public Health (Hampton, 2008), Communication and Organization Crisis (Praeger, 2003) and Risk Communication: A Message Centered Approach (Science Press, 2008). He also wrote Ethics in Organizational Communication (Hampton, 1998).

His work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, and the Michigan Department of Public Health. He also has participated in a U.S. Department of State project to train Russian government officials in effective crisis communication.

Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution of higher education offering more than 400 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 32,000 students.