Vice President & Dean, School of Business

University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) seeks an innovative, transformative, and student-centered academic leader to serve as Vice President and Dean of the School of Business (Dean). Reporting directly to the Senior Vice President and Chief Academic Officer (SVP-CAO), the Dean is a collaborative and enthusiastic servant leader who partners with the SVP-CAO and other university leaders to advance the vision, mission, and core values of the school and the university. Collegiality, camaraderie, and collaboration are essential since the ability to achieve institutional and school-specific outcomes through the effective leadership and management of others will be paramount to the Deans success.

The Dean is ultimately responsible for maintaining the excellence of the academic programs within the school and ensuring alignment of courses and programs to explicit knowledge, skills, abilities, and dispositions essential for success in the workplace. A visionary and strategic leader, the Dean is responsible for creating a coherent and compelling shared vision, strategy, and plan of delivery that ensures the schools academic portfolio is responsive to external market trends, matches demand, and delivers strategic targets. The Dean is expected to provide academic leadership in program and curriculum development, maintain and develop successful business partnerships with the industry and community leaders, and demonstrate a serious commitment to the education of business professionals and leaders. A champion for UMGCs open-access mission to offer workforce-relevant, high-quality, affordable programs for adult students, the Dean exemplifies and upholds a commitment to applying a diversity, equity, and inclusion lens to all people, processes, and business operations of the school.

Primary accountabilities of the Dean include the following:

Program Quality, Consistency, and Growth. The Dean is a champion for domain knowledge, program currency, and relevance to workplace needs within the schools program portfolio. Through academic assessment and continuous improvement, the Dean ensures that the school manages consistency across courses and programs to deliver a uniform and predictable student experience, support student retention, and enhance student learning. The Dean ensures the expansion and development of market-driven global programs across the school while promoting student success, retention, persistence, timely degree completion, and competitiveness of graduates within the workforce. Through the schools faculty and staff, the Dean will develop the schools reputation for providing an outstanding experience for students.
Internal and External Partnerships. In a highly matrixed, team-based environment, the Dean will model and cultivate collaborative relationships with individuals and teams throughout the university. The Dean leads with an entrepreneurial outlook and a drive to promote business innovation and cultivate a wide network of sector-relevant relationships; supports the development and maintenance of external partnerships-including those with community colleges and B2B partners-in an ongoing effort to expand access and pathways to education for the diverse adult learner population; and fosters close coordination and collaboration with academic affairs (AA) leadership and faculty in our Asia and Europe divisions to drive curricular alignment and consistency with stateside program oversight.
Faculty and Staff Quality. The Dean works to engage faculty and staff in the strategic work and domain focus of the school, building a learning community of experts who also engage with external stakeholders, such as community colleges, professional associations, employers, industry associations, and nonprofit groups. The Dean ensures teaching excellence, in addition to curriculum excellence, to deliver an optimal academic experience for students and upholds expectations that teaching be underpinned by professional practice and that all students receive quality feedback from supportive faculty to allow them to achieve their potential. The Dean is able to motivate a diverse workforce of faculty and staff personnel within the school to be committed to students success.
Curriculum Output. The Dean clarifies the curriculum portfolio of the school and looks for opportunities to vertically align undergraduate and graduate programs within and across the schools with a lens toward creating short and direct student pathways, accelerated program pathways, and stackable credentials that equip students with industry-validated knowledge, skills, abilities, and dispositions. The Dean collaboratively partners with other deans to create innovative interdisciplinary academic programs and with the Digital Teaching and Learning team and others to bring new programs to fruition in timely and market-responsive fashion.
Advancement of AA Strategic Initiatives. The Dean is responsible for leading at least two cross-cutting strategic projects annually, benefiting all of AA and the university, extending the impact of the Dean beyond their domain-specific school. The Dean is able to align resources effectively to ensure delivery of school, division, and institutional plans and priorities.
Required education and experience: An earned masters degree from an accredited institution of higher learning, preferably in a discipline related to or represented within the school; at least 10 years of successful experience in higher education administration, with evidence of progressive increases in levels of responsibility; experience leading and managing people and projects; ability to lead across a variety of disciplines, including those currently represented in the school as well as future programs; understanding and proven responsiveness to the challenges and opportunities in the changing landscape of the programs within the School of Business; demonstrated achievements in supporting and expanding the development of mutually beneficial industry partnerships and innovative curricular changes that support student success and respond to employer and workforce demand; demonstrated commitment to cultural diversity, equity, and inclusion; experience utilizing data and assessment to inform decisions; excellent communication and presentation skills; demonstrated experience with developing and managing budgets; ability to build collaboration and consensus; commitment to and familiarity with how to develop faculty and staff for success; experience setting high standards for self and team; experience motivating teams to new levels of achievement; creativity and innovation; and a track record of effective academic and administrative experience driving multiple simultaneous projects to successful completion.

Preferred education and experience: An earned doctorate or other terminal degree from an accredited institution of higher learning, preferably in a discipline related to or represented within the school; evidence of organizational savvy, demonstrating an understanding how to work effectively within an institution and across organizational units to get the job done on time and in alignment with strategic goals and objectives; inspirational, energetic, technologically savvy, and a superb communicator, with an ease and finesse that comes from emotional intelligence, cultural inclusivity, and sensitivity, a collaborative leadership style, and the highest ethical standards; engenders an environment of trust and cultivates a community engaged in and committed to continuous quality improvement and efficient change management; demonstrates a deeply-held commitment to open-access, adult-serving postsecondary education; demonstrated experience in promoting and scaling programs for adult learners; broad understanding and familiarity with higher education needs and the organizations that can conduct environmental scanning; demonstrated ability to engage institutional stakeholders in fostering and supporting new program development; deep understanding of current and emerging societal, economic, and cultural issues affecting/influencing higher education at this time; deep knowledge of embedding student learning outcomes within the curriculum and tying student success initiatives to the curriculum; knowledge of contemporary learning science and educational research, either through education or professional experience; knowledge of recent work in learner analytics research and application; ability to establish and maintain a productive network of relationships with potential partners in higher education, industry, government, the military, and the nonprofit sector; an excellent team player, willing and able to develop these qualities in direct reports and act in a way that fosters the same qualities among peers and across the UMGC team.