Reporting directly to the president, Kim Manning is responsible for the university’s internal and external communications and is a member of the Administrative Council and the President’s Cabinet. Manning oversees the Department of University Relations, which includes executive communications, media relations, publications, photography, website development, trademark licensing, Rutgers Magazine, campus information services, the RU-tv campus cable network, community affairs, marketing and brand management, and strategic communications, as well as a business services unit that addresses the personnel needs, administrative needs, and business matters of the department's multiple offices.
Major Initiatives
New projects undertaken under her direction include a major analysis of public perceptions of the university and its brand. The effort began with the Constituency Research Project, the most extensive survey of key New Jersey stakeholders ever undertaken by the university. Research findings led to the development of a comprehensive communications program designed to clarify the Rutgers brand and to convey the university’s strengths more effectively. As part of this program, Rutgers launched a new visual identity system, which was approved for use as a policy directive of the Board of Governors in December 2006. The university branding program is ongoing and also includes the Jersey Roots, Global Reach promotional campaign; an improved core university website; the Rutgers Today web-based news center, and Rutgers Day, an annual event that invites citizens to campus for free activities designed to inform them about their state university. The Rutgers branding program earned a CASE Gold Award in the Institution-Wide Branding Program category for 2007.
Other projects launched under Manning’s leadership include the New Faculty Traveling Seminar, which connects Rutgers and its newest faculty members with the state and its people during a five-day tour (now on hiatus due to budget constraints), and the establishment of the Rutgers Speakers Bureau. The Department of University Relations has won numerous awards for its publications, websites, public relations, and outreach programs, and received widespread accolades for the university’s management of the 2007 controversy stemming from disparaging remarks made by radio personality Don Imus about the Rutgers women’s basketball team.
Got Her Start in Television
Manning rose through the ranks at Rutgers, first joining the university’s Office of Television and Radio as a producer/director in 1985. She became director of that office in 1992. Between 1996 and 1998, she was a key member of the project management team for RUNet 2000 and was instrumental in the planning of this $98 million data, video, and voice network installation project, believed at the time to be the largest telecommunications project undertaken at an American university. She then took the lead for development of the video network component of the project, which led to the creation of the RU-tv campus cable network. RU-tv currently provides programming to approximately 15,000 residential students on the New Brunswick Campus. It features more than 100 channels, including seven channels of internally produced content.
For two years until 2001, she managed the merger of television and radio with the publications office. In 2001, she became executive director for university relations, serving initially in an acting capacity. She was appointed vice president for university relations in 2004. She is the first African American to hold the senior communications post at Rutgers.
Manning also worked for the CBS Television Network in New York as regional manager in the affiliate relations division and for WPXI-TV, an NBC affiliate in her native Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
While working at Rutgers, she earned an MBA in marketing management in 1989 from the Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from Clarion University of Pennsylvania. Manning has two sons, Phillip and Aaron.
Contact
Kim Manning, Vice President
848-932-1769
Email
Office of the Vice President
Department of University Relations
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
83 Somerset Street
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1281
Location: Old Queens Building, College Avenue Campus
