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Job Description

Fielding Graduate University
PRESIDENT
Santa Barbara, CA

Fielding Graduate University is something unique in American higher education: it actually is unique. For 35 years, Fielding has offered distinguished programs of research-based graduate education unbounded by place or time. In addition to its Schools of Educational Leadership and Change and Human and Organizational Development, Fielding is the only distributed learning-based doctoral program in Clinical Psychology accredited by the American Psychological Association. With faculty and students around the country - and increasingly around the world - Fielding Graduate University is and has been a world leader in non-traditional delivery of high-quality study.

Fielding Graduate University seeks a president to lead it to the next exciting level of excellence and innovation. Reporting to a deeply engaged board of trustees and serving as the chief executive officer of the university, the new president will inherit an institution with a distinguished and dedicated faculty, extraordinarily devoted students, a sound balance sheet, and no athletic program. From the university's headquarters in Santa Barbara, California, the president will lead a high tech, yet "high touch" institution that has the potential to serve additional cadres of students while maintaining its high standards for scholarship and learning. Doing so will require a true leader whose personal attributes comport with the words most frequently used to describe the people of Fielding: smart, caring, creative, and independent. Fielding's next president will have both scholarly credentials (as evidenced by an earned terminal degree), resonance with Fielding's intellectual culture, and exceptional business acumen characterized by an entrepreneurial spirit.

Fielding is traditional in some important ways. It is a non-profit organization and is heavily tuition dependent. Reducing that dependence will be an important goal for its next president. While its 86 full-time and 76 part-time faculty work on a contractual rather than tenured basis, the institution has an enviable track record as a guardian of academic freedom and free expression. Its 1,500 students are overwhelmingly working adults seeking to change careers, and they engage in an education that is rigorous and demanding. The university faces an increasingly competitive marketplace as both traditional institutions and for-profit organizations utilize modern technologies and learning methodologies to reach distributed audiences; the president will lead an institution with a 35-year record of achievement and generations of successful graduates with which to enhance its position in that marketplace.

The new president will lead an institution with outstanding intellectual bona fides and sound business fundamentals to a new level of attainment and public awareness. In accomplishing this task, the president will be guided by Fielding's central mission: to serve a community of scholar-practitioners dedicated to transformational learning, diversity, and social justice.

Recruitment will continue until the position is filled. Nominations, expressions of interest, and applications (including a cover letter and resume) should be submitted electronically to the consultants supporting Fielding Graduate University in this search, Dennis M. Barden and Robin G. Mamlet, at FieldingPres@wittkieffer.com.

Material that cannot be sent electronically may be mailed to:

This search will be conducted with the utmost respect for candidate confidentiality. Inquiries and questions concerning this search may be directed to Dennis M. Barden at 630-575-6167 or Robin G. Mamlet at 610-544-3474.

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