Position Description
President
Kennesaw State University

After 25 years of outstanding service as president of Kennesaw State University, Dr. Betty Siegel announced her intention to step down from that position. Therefore, the Board of Regents and Chancellor of the University System of Georgia are conducting a nationwide search for the President of Kennesaw State University. Kennesaw State University is the third largest state university in the University System of Georgia, with a student enrollment of 18,000 students in more than 55 academic programs.

The Board of Regents invites letters of nomination, applications (letters of interest, complete CVs, and five professional references), or expressions of interest to be submitted to the search firm representing the University System of Georgia. Confidential review of materials will begin immediately and continue until the appointment is made. It is preferred, however, that all nominations and applications be submitted prior to November 1, 2005. For a complete position description, refer to www.bpasearch.com.

Profile of the Future President

Kennesaw State University seeks a leader with the following characteristics and experienced-based skills as high priorities:

Vision
The president will lead all KSU stakeholders in defining a vision for the institution’s evolving mission and carrying out effective strategic planning to meet related goals. Thus, we seek a leader who can shape and articulate the purposeful, engaging, and dynamic mission of Kennesaw State in the twenty-first century. Over its forty-year history, KSU has benefited from forward-looking leadership open to new possibilities for the institution. The next president will build upon that legacy while leading KSU to the next level in a range of creative ways.

Scholarship
With Kennesaw State’s mission maturing, along with that of the state university system of Georgia as a whole, KSU will need a recognized scholar as its next president. Thus, the president should be a respected intellectual leader whose own past research and creative activities can represent the best that KSU has to offer to the region and the nation for building, synthesizing, and applying knowledge in the Boyer model of public intellectual work.

Valuing Diverse Faculty Roles
Even as KSU moves forward to new responsibilities as a growing and maturing public institution, teaching and service will remain at the heart of its mission. The next president will value and model outstanding teaching as KSU’s top priority, while encouraging research and professional and civic engagement. The president will also
seek ways to honor and reward both internal and external service as essential to KSU’s culture, while defining productive approaches for blending research, teaching and service.

Effective Leadership Style
The president will bring to KSU an open, collaborative, and confident leadership style based on effective past experience in higher education administration. The new president’s broad management skills and intellectual vision will be appropriate for moving Kennesaw State to expanded roles in the state university system and beyond—that is, will include successful leadership experience in an institutional setting consistent with KSU’s future mission.

Commitment to Building Diversity and Internationalization
The president will have the ability and the commitment to expand upon the strides KSU has already made toward building a more diverse student body, faculty, and staff. As one dimension of that role, and to improve the learning experiences of all the university’s stakeholders, the president will lead efforts to infuse global-oriented learning into the curriculum and campus life.

Experience in Securing Resources
As increasing emphasis is placed on the role the private sector should play in public education, the next president will need to draw on a range of skills for acquiring resources to address KSU’s longstanding challenge of fulfilling its mission with limited resources. The president will also be able to identify and garner new resources supporting the expansion of the institution’s core programs. He or she will connect fundraising with community networking that broadens the base of financial support for KSU—regionally, nationally, and internationally. The president will seek ways to affirm that KSU’s most vital resources are its students and the people whose work contributes to their learning.

Skills for Enhancing Leadership
With Kennesaw State growing in size of enrollment and complexity of academic and associated programs, the president will make consistent use of delegation as a management principle. Distributing leadership responsibilities across a broad spectrum of campus life, the president will utilize shared governance and thereby promote the development of wide-ranging leadership skills among administrators, faculty, staff and students.

Community-oriented and Student-centered Stance
The president will build on KSU’s tradition of student-centered teaching and learning, allied with the institution’s longstanding commitment to community engagement. The president will provide challenging, holistic learning experiences for students, including community-based learning and a campus social life both rich in diversity and broad in appeal. While serving as Kennesaw State’s ambassador to its many public stakeholders, he or she will also promote community-building across the campus. 

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