Job description

Ottawa University is pleased to announce a significant opportunity for a distinguished and visionary leader to assume the role of President for Ottawa University Online (OUOL). In this capacity, the President assumes the pivotal role of chief executive and true general manager for the University’s online, adult, and nonresidential campus programs as well as a growing suite of on-ground offerings at the Kansas City campus. This role is marked by active collaboration within an extensive university-wide system and infrastructure, including participation in the executive cabinet’s governance and strategic direction of the University. Reporting directly to the Chancellor, this position holds a central and influential position within the Ottawa University system.

Ottawa University is an institution with a proud 160 year heritage of educating adults and students of traditional ages for lifetimes of faith, service, leadership and significance. From its founding in 1865 in Ottawa, Kansas, the University has grown to an institution today that serves nearly 5,000 students through its residential campuses, adult and graduate studies campuses, and online. Ottawa University offers exceptional breadth and depth in its curriculum at the undergraduate and graduate levels which is constantly being updated and enhanced to make the greatest possible impact on the lives of its students.

POSITION SUMMARY

The President, OU Online serves as the chief leader for Ottawa University Online (OUOL) based in Overland Park, Kansas. In addition, the President will serve as an entrepreneurial thought-leader in the development of new programs, both online and in-person. The President will also lead and grow the increasing range of on-ground programs offered at the Overland Park campus.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Serve as a true strategic leader and general manager. Key success factors are budget management, enrollment growth, student experience and satisfaction, student retention, educational and student outcomes for the online and nonresidential campus programs.
• Requires a visionary, entrepreneureal, and strategic leader unafraid to assess and bring new programs to market.
• Responsible for a holistic approach to the development of students. Assures a welcoming and inclusive environment to all through a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and the development of high-impact graduates who make a difference wherever they live and serve.
• Adept at building rich and transformational relationships with students, parents, faculty, staff, administration, trustees, alumni, and external constituencies.
• Deep commitment to the academic mission of the University and resolute in advocating for academic integrity, intellectual freedom, and excellence in and out of the classroom.
• Is responsible for profit and loss management for the unit, and for continued leadership and oversight to a diverse and multi-faceted enterprise, including the financial demands and limitations necessary to ensure that OU Online maintains financial stability and the ability to invest in itself through effective revenue and expense management.
• Responsible for all unit employees, their development, the quality of work life, the effectiveness of the organization, and for leading the unit as a team as a part of all applicable campus operations.
• Responsible for community relations and for assuring a demonstrated mission centricity in all operations. Participates actively in planning and the cultivation of OU Online constituencies, fostering new friend and donor relationships that can financially impact the University in meaningful ways. Cultivates partnerships beyond the campuses that will benefit students, faculty and staff, and the institution as a whole.
• Serve as direct liaison to the OU Online Committee of the Board of Trustees. Regularly report to the Board regarding the status of OU Online. Participate in the Cabinet and in other ways to provide effective coordination and collaborative decision-making among senior administrative officers.

POSITION REQUIREMENTS

• Master’s Degree required.
• Five years or more of top-line successful executive experience, preferably in higher education.
• Knowledge of and commitment to communicate the University’s mission and identity of the University to faculty, staff, and students to promote the values and goals of higher education in teaching, learning, and scholarship.
• Enthusiastically entrepreneurial.
• Distinguished record of leadership and interpersonal skills necessary to inspire and build.
• Experience with executive-level leadership responsibilities in multiple operational areas.
• Experience in strategic planning, new business markets, and financial and data analysis.
• Ability to guide and work closely with Chancellor and Board of Trustees.
• Ability to work collaboratively and collegially with top-line executives in a complex, multi-site system.

OTTAWA UNIVERSITY EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW

• Ottawa University is a comprehensive, private, non-profit University, with a historic residential campus in Ottawa, Kansas. The University was founded in 1865 through a collaboration with the Ottawa Indian Tribe and the American Baptist Churches, USA.
• The Ottawa, Kansas residential campus is in its 160^th year of service.
• The University is a pioneer in adult higher education, with over 50 years of serving the unique needs of adult learners in the Kansas City, Phoenix and Milwaukee metropolitan areas, as well as through a robust online education division.
• Ottawa opened its highly successful Surprise, Arizona residential campus in 2017, setting new records for enrollment growth and immediate sustainability.
• The University has been continuously accredited since 1914 by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), and is one of the oldest continuously accredited higher educational systems in America.
• The University operates with 455 full and part-time faculty, including adjunct faculty. Approximately 84% of the full-time teaching faculty at Ottawa University hold a doctorate and the remaining 16% have a minimum of a master’s degree as the highest degree earned.
• The University benefits from its Flex-Term academic schedule, designed to meet the demands of the particular course and related student learning patterns.
• Ottawa is a highly successful member of the NAIA, the Kansas Collegiate Athletic Conference, the Sooner Conference, the Golden State Athletic Conference, and the National Christian College Athletics Association. OU offers 33 varsity sports at its Kansas campus and 31 varsity sports at its Arizona campus, and enrolls more NAIA varsity athletes at its two residential campuses than any college in America.
• The University has produced a track record of organic growth from within a solid and respected 160 year old higher educational institution by growing its gross revenues and net tuition revenues by 86% and 69%, respectively since 2016.
• Ottawa has been successful in its fundraising activities since 2008 and has enjoyed outstanding results in its capital campaigns with strong support from the board and friends of the institution.
• Ottawa benefits from an unusually well-diversified strategic business model with three lines of business operating nationally and internationally, and is strongly positioned to sustain its growth and success well into the future.
• The newer Arizona residential campus located in Surprise achieved critical mass in just four years. OUAZ benefits from its location in the 5^th largest and fastest growing state in the United States and in the fastest growing county (Maricopa) in the United States–a market with very little private higher education.
• The school has been built on the foundation of its resurgent historical campus in Kansas which is enjoying the highest enrollment in its history.
• Augmenting the two residential campuses is a powerful and profitable online and adult site distribution model with physical locations in Kansas City (Overland Park, KS), Phoenix (Surprise, AZ), and Milwaukee (Brookfield, WI).
• A commitment to the development of the whole person is deeply embedded in the University’s cultural and operational DNA.
• Collaborative and sensitive, yet firm, leadership and management skills. Someone who is able to elicit participation and support from individuals and groups.
• A high level of oral and written communications skills.
• A strategic and creative thinker with strong analytical skills.
• The ability to work collaboratively and collegially with diverse groups of individuals inside and outside the University.

OTTAWA UNIVERSITY LEADERSHIP

William M. (Bill) Tsutsui, PhD
Chancellor and Professor of History

Bill Tsutsui joined the Ottawa University family on July 1, 2021 and hit the ground running. In his first year at Ottawa University, Bill led a broadly based and inclusive strategic planning effort, spearheaded an initiative to build endowed scholarship funds for students in need, and stewarded the creation of the institution’s first doctoral degree and a new master’s in applied psychology. To encourage engagement and collaboration across the University, Bill established new forums for communications and community input, stressed transparency in decision-making, and sought to build a University-wide problem-solving culture. Bill is an award-winning historian, a passionate classroom teacher, and a seasoned academic leader with a record of innovation. Born in New York City and raised in Texas, he holds degrees from Harvard, Oxford, and Princeton.

Bill began his academic career at the University of Kansas, where over 17 years he held a range of administrative positions, including chair of the Department of History and associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. From 2010 to 2014, he was dean of Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. From June 2014 through December 2019, Bill served as president of Hendrix College, a top-tier national liberal arts college founded in 1876, where he stressed accessibility and affordability, diversity and inclusion, a commitment to the core values of a liberal arts education, and connecting with the college’s Arkansas heritage. Most recently, Bill served as the Edwin O. Reischauer Distinguished Visiting Professor at Harvard University. A former member of the NCAA D-III Presidents Council, he is currently on the boards of the US-Japan Bridging Foundation and the US-Japan Council, and was appointed in 2020 to the Japan-US Friendship Commission.

WHY WE SERVE

Since its inception in 1865, Ottawa University has sought to live out its mission in some unique and powerful ways. It began with the collaboration between two American Baptist missionaries, Jotham and Eleanor Meeker, and the Ottawa Indian Tribe of Kansas to promote education and peace in a rapidly changing world. Out of this relationship, Ottawa University was born. Ever mindful of the University’s original commitments, treaties and agreements were refreshed and strengthened in 2008 by then President & CEO Kevin Eichner and the Board of Trustees, allowing all Ottawa Indians to attend the University at any of its locations free of charge. Since 2008, more than 350 tribal members have enrolled and over 150 have graduated, far more than in the 143 prior years put together. In recognition of this esteemed relationship, the Ottawa Tribe made a major donation in the form of a beautiful fire-and-water feature that is the signature element of the University’s Gangwish Library and Gibson Student Center. The Tribe and the University continue to enjoy harmonious collaboration in pursuit of mutual aims.

Ottawa University has grown from its origins on the banks of the Marais des Cygnes River in Kansas to a comprehensive, not-for-profit, educational institution, which serves students of traditional age and adult learners worldwide. Thoroughly grounded in its mission, Ottawa University carries out its educational purposes through its liberal arts and professional studies programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Ottawa University guides learners to integrate faith, learning, and life, to gain the abilities they need to succeed and prosper, and to do so with an increased sense of the knowledge, compassion, respect, and service our world requires. Interested candidates are encouraged to review the University’s Mission Documents, which include the Mission and Vision Statements reproduced below as well as the University’s Diversity Policy and Code of Conduct, all of which are available on the University’s website, www.ottawa.edu/About-Us.

MISSION

Building on its foundation as a Christ-inspired community of grace and open inquiry, Ottawa University prepares professional and liberal arts graduates for lifetimes of personal significance, vocational fulfillment, and service to God and humanity.

VISION

Ottawa University will elevate student learning and deliver exceptional outcomes for our graduates as we embrace innovation and foster a community of collaboration and belonging.

ACADEMIC PROGRAMS

Ottawa University offers degree programs in more than 50 academic disciplines (38 undergraduate, 11 graduate and 1 doctoral), including healthcare management, nursing, humanities and the social sciences, education, business, and STEM. The University offers well over 100 areas of study (majors, minors, and concentrations). These academic programs are offered in various locations throughout the country including satellite campuses, the traditional residential campuses, and online.

The most popular majors among traditional undergraduate students include Exercise Science (20%), Business Administration (20%), Psychology (10%), Sport Leadership (10%), and Biology (8%).

Excellent graduate programs are offered in Applied Psychology, Business, Counseling, Education and Nursing, as well as a large Executive MBA program for international students already in country. The University launched its first doctoral degree program, a Doctor of Business Administration, on the Ottawa campus in fall 2022. The University continues to research and develop new academic offerings that the market needs and programs from which graduates can serve our communities and their healthcare demands: physical, mental, and emotional health; such as the Master of Arts in Counseling program in Kansas City, launched in Spring 2023, and the new Bachelor of Science in Nursing: Prelicensure program, which prepares students to enter the nursing profession as Registered Nurses, which was approved by the Kansas Board of Nursing in 2023 and began its first cohort in Spring 2024. Additionally, in support of Health Professions programs, the University is working to launch the Master of Science: Physician Assistant program with the first cohort expected in the spring of 2026.

CAMPUS LOCATIONS

The University’s Ottawa, Kansas residential campus is located on sixty-four acres. This campus has sixteen major buildings, including three residence halls, seven academic and administrative buildings, four athletic facilities, a student-dining center, and a library/conference center.

The University’s Surprise, Arizona campus currently sits on 13 acres. This campus has planned access to an additional 20 acres immediately south of its current campus, which will be developed over time to include additional academic, administrative, housing, and athletic facilities as enrollments increase.

In December of 2020, the University completed a highly successful $38 million public bond offering, allowing it to own all of its Arizona properties and to do so at materially lower costs over time. Because of its track record of growth and its unique business strategy and model, the investment banking firm of Ziegler and Company noted that Ottawa achieved the most favorable pricing for its bonds of any non-rated higher education credit in the entire preceding year.

In addition to the two residential campuses, Ottawa operates adult sites in Surprise (Phoenix), Overland Park (Kansas City), Brookfield (Milwaukee), & Online. As a pioneer in adult education, Ottawa University has been offering busy adults the opportunity to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the Kansas City-metropolitan area for almost 50 years.

NOMINATION & APPLICATION PROCESS

CBIZ EFL Associates an executive search firm, is assisting Ottawa University with its search for this important leadership position. All calls and inquiries should be made through the search firm. Nominations and applications will be held in strict confidence and candidates will remain confidential until the final stage of the search, at which time the express permission of finalists will be obtained before making their candidacy public.

How to apply

Application Process

STEP 1: Complete a brief online application (2-3 minutes):

• • https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/PresOUOL

STEP 2: Send us your letter of interest and résumé or curriculum vitae:

• • Send in PDF format
  • Send to [email protected]
  • Email subject line should read – “President, OUOL Application”

Key Dates

• • Application deadline is Friday, February 28, 2025
  • Semi-Finalist Interviews are scheduled for April 2 thru 4, 2025.
  • On campus Interviews tentatively scheduled for week of April 14, 2025.

Confidential Inquiries

Steve Waldron, JD
VP & Managing Director, Higher Education Practice
816-945-5423 (direct)
Email: [email protected]

Nominations & Application Questions

Edith Ketay
Program Manager, Higher Education Practice
816-841-4001 (direct)
Email: [email protected]

APPLY NOW