A message from Rafael Lorente, dean of the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism:
It is with excitement for her future, sadness because we will miss her, and deep, deep gratitude for what she has meant to Merrill College that I relay to you that Howard Center Director Kathy Best will retire at the end of December.
A job posting and a timeline for finding Kathy’s successor will be announced in the coming weeks.
As the founding director when the Scripps Howard Foundation launched the Howard Centers in 2019, Kathy has teamed with Sean Mussenden, Deb Nelson and many others to elevate the reputation of Merrill College. Her leadership of the Howard Center has made it the most collaborative and innovative center of its kind in the country, and earned it Pulitzer finalist honors this year. Most importantly, Kathy and her team have helped transform how we teach and support our students at a time when investigative reporting is both more challenging and more necessary.
Her leadership and impact were felt from the moment she arrived, with the inaugural project — the “Code Red” collaboration with NPR, which shined a light on the disparate effects of climate change on urban areas — winning a series of major national journalism awards that put the new Howard Center on the map.
That innovation and teamwork continued through national investigations into homelessness, the racist past of newspapers, lotteries’ multibillion-dollar wealth transfers from low-income communities, congressional travel spending, the lack of protections for essential workers amid the pandemic and rail transportation of hazardous materials.
This spring, the “Lethal Restraint” investigation into deaths by police using force that was intended to be non-lethal — which involved more than 200 of our students, faculty and staff partnering with AP, FRONTLINE (PBS) and the ASU Howard Center — was the first Merrill College journalism ever named a Pulitzer finalist.
For years to come, Kathy’s impact will be felt all over the world as students who learned and worked in the Howard Center investigate governments and corporations, and help tell stories that powerful people and institutions would prefer not be told. Thank you, Kathy.
Rafael Lorente
Dean
UMD Philip Merrill College of Journalism