Vice President for Enrollment, Marketing and Communications

Valparaiso University invites inquiries, nominations, and applications for the position of vice president for enrollment, marketing and communications.

A selective, independent institution in Valparaiso, Indiana, an hour's drive from Chicago, iValparaiso is a vibrant and complex institution with a longstanding national reputation for academic excellence and innovation guided by its Lutheran mission and ethos. The freedom to pursue truth and to serve others unites and informs the University's academic and spiritual missions within a community that celebrates and embraces students, faculty, and staff from all backgrounds and faiths.

Valparaiso University — or “Valpo” as the University is referred to — offers more than 70 degree programs to 3,100 students engaged by more than 300 faculty in four colleges: Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Nursing and Health Professions, and Business. Valpo also has a distinguished honors college, Christ College, and offers more than 25 degree and certificate programs in its Graduate School and Continuing Education program. Recognized for its original programs and networks, often national in scope, Valpo provides its students with both a transformative liberal arts education and a wide array of professional programs that prepare them to lead and serve with a passionate devotion to imagining and creating a better society for the good of their communities, their organizations, and their world. Valpo's academic environment has long been recognized as one of the finest in the Midwest by U.S. News and World Report and other publications; the steady growth of its programs is reflected in its recent re-classification as a Carnegie national Doctoral/Professional University.

Reporting to recently appointed President José D. Padilla, the vice president for enrollment, marketing and communications will have the opportunity to join an institution driven by ambition, creativity, and enthusiasm. The vice president will provide strategic, holistic, and institution-wide leadership for a newly configured division that includes admissions, financial aid, and integrated marketing and communications. The vice president will develop and implement an aggressive plan for enrollment that employs cutting-edge technology, embraces the best use of data, and puts forward Valpo's Lutheran mission to attract an increasingly broad and diverse national and global cross-section of students. In leading the University's integrated marketing and communications function (a centralized office that helps the University communicate with one voice), the vice president will support the University’s efforts to communicate what makes Valpo special and unique, enhancing and promoting the University's reputation to prospective students, parents, alumni, the community, and audiences around the globe. Critical to this work will be the vice president's commitment to working collaboratively with the president, the other vice presidents, the deans, department chairs, and other members of the University’s leadership team.

The successful candidate will bring vision; innovation; integrity; significant strategic and analytical capacity; exceptional communication skills; technological savvy; an inclination always to place students at the forefront; and a strong commitment to the Valpo community and to its Lutheran mission that is rooted in the tradition of scholarship, freedom, and faith. A commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is essential, with a record of increasing access for traditionally underrepresented student populations.

All applications, nominations, and inquiries are invited. Applications should include, as two separate documents, a CV or resume and a letter of interest addressing the themes in the leadership profile, available at www.wittkieffer.com.

WittKieffer is assisting Valparaiso University in this search. For fullest consideration, candidate materials should be received by March 1, 2021.

Application materials should be submitted using WittKieffer’s candidate portal.

Nominations and inquiries can be directed to:

Amy Crutchfield and Shelley Arakawa, J.D.
Valpo-VPEMC@wittkieffer.com

Valparaiso University is an equal-opportunity, affirmative-action employer. See https://www.valpo.edu/general-counsel/policies/equal-opportunity-policy/ for a detailed statement of its practices.