UNIVERSITY PARK – Penn State President Graham B. Spanier named Bill Mahon vice president for University Relations effective May 1, pending approval by the Board of Trustees.
He will replace Stephen J. MacCarthy, who recently announced he will leave the University after 11 years for a new position at the University of Arizona.
Mahon, who currently serves as assistant vice president for University Relations and director of the Department of Public Information, has worked at Penn State for 23 years. The Office of University Relations is comprised of the departments of Public Information, Marketing, Publications, Campus and Community Affairs and Advancement Projects and Communications.
“Bill Mahon is ideally suited to lead University Relations at Penn State,” Spanier said. “His dedication to Penn State, combined with his innovation, national leadership, and creativity with new media make him the perfect match for this role in the years to come.”
Mahon has guided the development of the Penn State Newswire, an e-mail-based news service that now has 460,000 subscriptions from people living in more than 120 countries. He also has overseen the development of the Penn State Live news Web site, the Penn State Press Pass media Web site, and helped launched the University’s text message telephone news service, PSUTXT. He is a popular speaker nationally among higher education groups on issues related to use of the Internet and technology for the delivery of news, photos and video.
Before joining Penn State, Mahon worked as a newspaper reporter and editor. He has been involved in numerous university and national committees and organizations dealing with a broad range of higher education issues.
With 84,000 students and a research budget of nearly $700 million, Penn State is among the top teaching and research universities in the nation. It employs nearly 40,000 people at 24 campuses, and its $3.4 billion annual budget has a significant impact on the economy of the Commonwealth.
“I walked into Old Main for the first time 23 years ago this week,” Mahon said. “I still walk in each day excited by the chance to spend the day with students and faculty, the chance to get to know more alumni, and with a lot of pride for the many good things this institution accomplishes — from the lives saved at Penn State’s Hershey Medical Center to the excitement on the faces of a group of students assembling a rocket payload in The Learning Factory.”
“The nation has many great colleges and universities, but it has only one institution with the breadth and depth and the important role of Penn State,” he said.