In recent years, the role of the college president has expanded — some might say sprawled — into new responsibilities. Today’s presidents are expected not just to run institutions but also to be their public face, representing them to students as well as parents, government officials, and donors. They must navigate thorny campus issues like sexual assault and alcohol. And in an age when any misstep can go viral, they are relied on to know how to deal with unfolding crises in ways that won’t make the situation worse.
Given those new demands, a group of administrators often passed over for the top job is getting a fresh look: vice presidents for student affairs.
College presidents whose previous positions were in student affairs made up just 4.5 percent of presidents in a 2011 survey conducted by the American Council on Education. More recent data aren’t available, but the past four years have seen a number of private colleges, regional public institutions, and historically black colleges hire presidents with student-affairs backgrounds. According to search consultants, more and more candidate pools include student-affairs leaders among the finalists.
That’s not surprising when you consider how many issues from the world of student affairs — like binge drinking and campus safety — “have suddenly found their way onto the president’s desk,” says Sheila J. Murphy, an executive-search consultant with Witt/Kieffer, a recruiting firm.
In fact, the demands of the contemporary presidency “have taken a little bit of the glow away” from the job for some provosts, Ms. Murphy says. That opens the door wider for other candidates, including student-affairs professionals.
After all, student-affairs administrators spend their careers on call at all hours, in a public role, and often in the kind of highly politicized situations that have transformed the presidency. According to Dean L. Bresciani, a former vice president for student affairs at Texas A&M University at College Station and current president of North Dakota State University, “All the things that would be a turnoff for a provost, a student-affairs person would laugh and say, ‘When do we get to the bad stuff?’”
‘You Go’
College presidents with student-affairs backgrounds are not new, though they have been more common at community colleges than at four-year institutions in decades past. With more attempts to improve student recruitment and retention, having someone in the top job who has spent a career focused on students and the student experience may make for a smart bet.
James A. Troha’s experience as vice president for student affairs at Heidelberg University, in Ohio, has proved valuable in his subsequent role as president of Juniata College, in rural Pennsylvania. In 2014, when a student fell critically ill with symptoms consistent with bacterial meningitis, Mr. Troha galvanized his staff to keep students and their parents informed, and to make sure the illness didn’t spread.
He drove more than 30 miles to the hospital, where he met the student’s mother, who was furious at him because her son was so ill. In his student-affairs career, Mr. Troha says he learned that when a student is in the hospital, “You go. Whether it’s going to be bad or good, you be there.”
He sat with the student’s mother and won back her trust. The student eventually recovered, and Mr. Troha hopes he will return to class in the fall.
Mr. Troha acknowledges that the situation might have turned out just as well in the hands of a president with a more typical background, but he adds that, unlike student-affairs leaders, those who oversee academic matters “are not at hospitals at night.”
That experience in handling a crisis is becoming a sought-after trait in presidential candidates, according to Ms. Murphy of Witt/Kieffer. During discussions with one search committee, she says, a member seemed to care less about the college’s uphill enrollment battle and more about the new president’s ability to handle a situation that could so tarnish the college’s public image that its enrollment would never recover. During another search, a trustee told her, “I just don’t want somebody in the leadership role who’s never managed a suicide.”
Some boards find student-affairs leaders attractive for other reasons. Being pulled in different directions — fund raising, athletics, a fraternity scandal — is a daily reality for contemporary college presidents. That student affairs touches on almost every aspect of a college means that the vice presidents spend little time stuck in a departmental silo. “If you want to find the one person on campus who knows a little bit about most everything that’s going on, it’s going to be a student-affairs person,” Mr. Bresciani said.
College presidents are now expected to serve as brand exemplar in chief. Many boards hope for a promotional superhero who grabs lunch with students and dinner with potential donors, tweeting all the while. Student-affairs administrators tend to cultivate the kind of communication skills, and stamina, that help them “go to all those chicken dinners and give all those speeches,” says Walter M. Kimbrough, president of Dillard University, in Louisiana, and a former vice president for student affairs at Albany State University, in Georgia.
For some student-affairs leaders, being engaging and enthusiastic for 12 hours or more comes naturally. Mr. Troha, of Juniata, says he and many of his colleagues “found student affairs as a home because it fits our personality.” Now the presidency is another job for which that personality fits.
Dark Horses
But what about the academic mission? It turns out it’s one of the major reasons some candidates from student affairs remain dark horses. Many boards and search committees still resist student-affairs professionals because of concerns about whether they can manage the faculty or run a substantial research enterprise.
Mr. Bresciani, at North Dakota State, notes that the student-affairs office he ran at Texas A&M had the staffing and budget of a small college. He has a Ph.D., as do many other presidents with student-affairs backgrounds. He teaches and publishes scholarly work.
But like many student-affairs administrators turned presidents, Mr. Bresciani has a degree in higher-education administration. It’s a field that doesn’t always carry the same credibility with the faculty as a disciplines like physics, according to Kevin W. Kruger, president of Naspa — Student Affairs Professionals in Higher Education. Mr. Kruger adds that when search firms call him for references for student-affairs leaders pursuing presidential positions, they commonly ask whether the candidate can hold his or her own on the academic side.
Another frequently raised concern about student-affairs candidates involves the fund raising that has also redefined a college president’s duties. Vice presidents for student affairs may be involved in courting donors, but few have experience bringing in the kind of big gifts that anchor campaigns.
The fund-raising emphasis means that vice presidents for advancement and deans of professional schools are also among the nontraditional candidates getting a harder look for presidencies, according to Gale D. Merseth, a vice president at the executive-search firm Isaacson, Miller. But student-affairs administrators may be able to make up for fund-raising inexperience by playing up their work in enrollment management. If a new president can raise retention by a handful of percentage points, it can equal millions of dollars in annual revenue for a college, he says.
After all, making sure that students have a good experience on a campus is the core of student-affairs work, and it is ever more central to the job of the president. As Mr. Troha of Juniata puts it, “We don’t exist without our students.”
