Position Description

About Northwestern University

Founded in 1851, Northwestern University is one of the country's leading private research and teaching universities with an enrollment of approximately 7,800 full-time undergraduate students and approximately 6,300 full-time graduate and professional students on campuses in Evanston and Chicago.

Northwestern combines innovative teaching and pioneering research in a highly collaborative environment that transcends traditional academic boundaries. Northwestern provides students and faculty exceptional opportunities for intellectual, personal, and professional growth in a setting enhanced by the richness of Chicago as well as significant University programs in conjunction with international universities and countries.

The University includes the following 11 schools and colleges (with year of founding):

• Judd A. and Marjorie Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences (1851)
• School of Communication (1878)
• School of Continuing Studies (1933)
• School of Education and Social Policy (1926)
• Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science (1909)
• Graduate School (1910)
• Medill School of Journalism (1921)
• School of Law (1859)
• J.L. Kellogg School of Management (1908)
• Feinberg School of Medicine (1859)
• School of Music (1859)

Northwestern operates with an annual budget of $1.5 billion, an endowment of over $7 billion, and more than $416 million in sponsored research awards.

A highly interdisciplinary culture permeates Northwestern University. More than 90 school-based centers and 20 University centers support pioneering, cross-cutting research in fields such as materials science, game theory, African studies, performance studies, and marketing. Through the years, Northwestern research has earned international recognition in nanotechnology, economics, communications, biochemistry, neuroscience, cancer research, and many other fields. At Northwestern, and often with partners at Argonne National Laboratory, Fermilab, affiliated hospitals and other universities, interdisciplinary teams work to solve society’s problems and to facilitate clinical and commercial use of their innovations.

Northwestern has the advantages of a major university — superior facilities, extraordinary academic opportunities, more than 200 student groups, and NCAA Division I athletics — while providing individual attention to its students. With a student-faculty ratio of seven to one, nearly three-quarters of all undergraduate classes have fewer than 20 students.

Northwestern University’s two beautiful campuses in the Chicago metropolitan area provide students, faculty, and staff a wealth of outstanding intellectual, professional, social, and cultural opportunities. Both campuses are located on Lake Michigan: Evanston’s 240-acre campus is located in the first suburb north of Chicago and Chicago’s 25-acre medical, law, business, and continuing education campus is located in the vibrant and beautiful neighborhood between Lake Shore Drive and Michigan Avenue. The University employs more than 2,500 full-time faculty members and 3,500 full-time staff members. Faculty members include Pulitzer Prize winners, MacArthur Fellowship recipients, Tony Award winners, and members of numerous honorary and professional societies, including the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Education. Its libraries’ holdings rank tenth among the nation’s private universities.

Position Summary

As the chief executive officer of Northwestern University, the President works in close consultation with the Board of Trustees, the faculty and a wide range of internal and external constituencies to provide academic and administrative leadership and direction for the University. The President is expected to foster and build upon the existing strengths of the University and provide the strategic leadership to chart and guide its future course. The President is expected to advance the human, intellectual and financial resources of the University and to advance the institution’s role and standing within the national and international communities of research and higher education.

The agenda of Northwestern University’s next President will include:

• Promoting outstanding scholarship and teaching across the University both within and across disciplines;

• Engaging and building the faculty, providing necessary resources to further Northwestern’s academic standing through fundraising and revenues from technology transfer, and seeking federal and state support;

• Continuing to improve the undergraduate, graduate and professional school experience – academic, residential, and co-curricular;

• Expanding and enhancing the Northwestern’s national and international profile and reputation;

• Evaluating resources and institutional strengths, setting ambitious goals, developing plans for realizing those goals and consistently communicating progress toward them to key constituents;

• Building a high-performance, collaborative, service-oriented senior leadership team;

• Fostering meaningful relationships with key constituents, including faculty, students, staff, alumni and community leaders, thereby engaging them in the life of the school and creating a sense of ownership, camaraderie, and shared destiny; and,

• Increasing ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic diversity across the University.

Key Selection Criteria

Ideal Experience

The successful candidate will have superb academic credentials and a track record of increasing responsibility and successful leadership in a world-class institution that highly values both research and teaching. Specifically, he/she will have an experience base that includes:

• Driving institutional excellence academically, administratively, and financially;

• Developing and promoting a vision based on the unique identity of the institution;

• Balancing the goals of classroom education, academic research, performance, clinical care and undergraduate, graduate, and professional studies;

• Managing significant budgets, building financial resources, maintaining and improving infrastructure, and investing resources strategically;

• Building a sense of “international citizenship” at an institutional level;

• Engaging directly and successfully in fundraising activities;

• Fostering diversity across an academic and residential community;

• Raising the profile of an institution by representing it effectively in the public domain and communicating a vision to internal and external constituencies; and,

• Working effectively with a board of trustees.

Critical Competencies for Success

Institution Building: Lead the advancement of the institution’s capabilities, assets, and reputation in an increasingly competitive and rapidly changing higher education environment by:

• Developing a strategic agenda and capital allocation plan that will enable the University to achieve the “next level” of institutional leadership;

• Building on the institution’s international growth and success while creating a climate that fosters innovation and distinctiveness; and,

• Attracting financial capital to the University commensurate with its ambitions and needs, with a special emphasis on academic talent, diversity and infrastructure.

Ability to Motivate: Inspire the University’s key constituents – faculty, staff, students, and alumni – to invest their talents, energies, and resources to make Northwestern an even finer institution by:

• Communicating a consistent, ambitious message about Northwestern, its aspirations, and its achievements, thereby enhancing institutional pride and a sense of common purpose;

• Providing strong leadership as the University competes for academic talent and financial resources with other world-class academic institutions; and,

• Creating mechanisms for all members of the Northwestern University community to contribute to and celebrate the University’s successes while enhancing institutional confidence.

Engagement: Proactively work to engage the University in the issues of the day nationally, internationally and locally, building its profile and role as an institutional citizen by:

• Serving as critical interface between the University and the broader world, identifying issues where the University can make a positive contribution;

• Actively fostering a stronger sense of community on campus and developing mechanisms to support interaction and relationship-building between the University and academic, scientific, civic, and cultural institutions; and,

• Leveraging existing relationships to build and expand partnerships and to enhance the University’s reputation and financial strength.