Biography

Assistant Professor June West teaches First Year "Management Communication" in the MBA program at Darden and Second Year electives in special topics in organizational communication. She is the university Faculty liaison to the FBI National Academy in Quantico, VA, and team-teaches in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. West also directs a Darden faculty team that teaches in the summer orientation program for the Secretary of Defense Corporate Fellows program that places active-duty military officers in corporations for a one-year fellowship.

West was instrumental in the inception in 2003 of the Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education (PLE). This partnership between the graduate schools of business and education was formed to strategically combine the most innovative thinking in business and education to provide education leaders with the knowledge, tools, skills and resources necessary for managing and governing schools and school systems. West served as the academic director and today is an active faculty member in the PLE's School Turnaround Specialist Program, now the most established turnaround program in the country. She consults with school districts on developing and communicating strategic vision and building effective coalitions. She also consults with universities throughout the country whose schools of business and education are creating similar partnerships.

West has been in the business of communication since her graduation in 1972 from the University of Tennessee (UT). She was a member of the staff for the Tennessee Statistical Abstract published by the Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) in UT's College of Business and Economics in conjunction with the Office of the Governor of Tennessee. She then was appointed Editor of the Tennessee Survey of Business, an academic refereed journal published by CBER and the College of Business.

She moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where she first worked at the Cleveland Health Education Center as director of public relations and assistant director of development. Her primary responsibilities were to produce the center's newsletter and promotional literature as well as to increase membership in and visitors to the center. Through a partnership with the Cleveland Clinic, West designed an innovative summer camp for high school students interested in careers in the health sciences. Another partnership with ABC's affiliate news station in Cleveland brought the local evening news to the center for the broadcast of its weekly medical segment. She then accepted a position as senior editor of the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation in Cleveland, where she was responsible for writing and producing the foundation's publications. She was a member of the editorial team for Professor John Goodland's Study of Schooling, a comprehensive investigation of the state of the nation's schools. The study was funded by some of the nation's major foundations including the Ford, Rockefeller, Kettering, Gund, Charles Stewart Mott, Danforth and Jennings foundations.

West's move to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1980 began her transition from communication practitioner to academic. At Lehigh University, she first worked as the research editor for the Office of Vice President of Research, where she was responsible for promoting the activities for Lehigh's research centers and institutes.

She then was asked to join the faculty of Lehigh's College of Business and Economics to design and develop one of the first centers for business communication in the country. Funded by a generous donation from Lehigh alumni Philip Rauch, the center offered courses in undergraduate and graduate managerial communication and corporate communication as well as writing across the curriculum program. The center housed a business writing clinic, staffed by MBA students, and a corporate communication intern program.

West left Lehigh to join the faculty at the Stern School of Business at New York University and then accepted a tenure-track appointment in the Master of Arts Program in Corporate and Public Communication at Seton Hall University. At Seton Hall she served on two presidential commissions to design Seton Hall's virtual university. She also was on the faculty team that designed and developed the executive graduate program in Corporate and Public Communcation.

As a communication consultant, West has worked with executives in a variety of organizations, universities and public school districts. Some of her clients have included AT&T; IBM; Clark Construction; Digital Equipment; Binney & Smith, a division of Hallmark; The Heritage Foundation; Jefferson Area Board of Aging; Louisiana Department of Education; Pennsylvania Power & Light; Occidental Chemical Corporation; and Mississippi State University Colleges of Business and Education.

West lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, and has two sons, Benjamin and Nathan.