Lehigh University

President

Bethlehem, PA

Lehigh University (Lehigh) is a diverse, top-50, research-intensive, and private residential university with a formidable teaching tradition and nearly 7,000 students. It seeks an innovative president with proven, managerial talent and the capacity to successfully implement bold, strategic decisions. It envisions a future in which Lehigh provides one of the finest academic and personal experiences available in a private university anywhere in the country, matched to national stature as an exceptional, mid-size research university. It requires a decisive and engaging leader attentive to its legacy and equal to its ambition, who can leverage its community and considerable assets to plant Lehigh as a leader in the American academy of the future. 

For its size, Lehigh has one of the strongest balance sheets in higher education, with a $1.4 billion endowment, including $200 million in quasi endowment. It possesses extensive real estate holdings, which offer possibilities for future academic and commercial development. It has one of the strongest “value propositions” for students available in higher education. Its graduates are employed swiftly and paid well, and the alumni body impressively succeeds.

At the same time, Lehigh recognizes that it cannot continue to be a great university and attract the very best faculty, staff, and students unless it is an especially successful and nationally recognized, interdisciplinary, research university. The original four colleges - Arts & Sciences, Business & Economics, Education, and Engineering - offer an impressive platform, and strategic investments of the last several years, including the newly-added College of Health, reflect the demands of our modern-day economy. The new Health, Science, and Technology Building, with flexible research and teaching space, is the most strategically important academic and research facility Lehigh has built in years. The University is actively expanding the size of its student body, with a planned increase in enrollment by 1,000 undergraduate students and 500 to 800 full-time graduate students over a period of seven years.

Under this next president, Lehigh’s ambitious trajectory must continue. The foundations are firmly in place, with the resources, the history, and the people to teach and invent for the future. In research, Lehigh has laid the groundwork. It has great advantages as a mid-size university with the right combination of colleges. It has invested and will continue to invest. The next president must create an even more distinctive student experience and accelerate its trajectory of scholarly and research growth, all to ensure the national prominence it has earned and deserves. 

Lehigh has retained Isaacson, Miller, a national executive search firm, to assist with this important search. Please direct all inquiries, nominations, referrals, and applications in strict confidence to:

John Isaacson, Chair

Rebecca Swartz, Partner

Berkley Burke, Associate

Isaacson, Miller

www.imsearch.com/7755

Lehigh University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of age, color, disability, gender, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, national or ethnic origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status. Lehigh University provides comprehensive benefits, including partner benefits.