Vice President for Finance, Administration and Treasurerlapovsky.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/vpfat.pdf · Pitzer College Vice President for Finance, Administration and Treasurer

Pitzer College Claremont, California

Vice President for Finance, Administration and Treasurer

Position Specification

March, 2018

Prepared by: Lucie Lapovsky, Principal Lapovsky Consulting

Pitzer College Vice President for Finance, Administration and Treasurer

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Pitzer College, a leading liberal arts college in Claremont, CA with 1,089 undergraduate students, a budget of $62.5 million and an endowment of $132.9 million, seeks a vice president for finance, administration and treasurer (VPFAT). The College, a member of the Claremont Consortium, emphasizes community engagement at every level, from local participation in the College’s shared governance, to its nationally leading position in the Fulbright Fellows program. The VPFAT, reporting directly to the president, will steward the College’s financial, physical and human resources and will support the board’s investment, budget, audit and facilities committees.

The College, rooted in a foundation of social responsibility, environmental sustainability and world-class teaching is driven by a distinguished faculty with a deep commitment to interdisciplinary teaching and research. Pitzer is at a defining moment, and the new vice president will aide the President and his senior team in their efforts to work collaboratively with the Pitzer community to imagine the College’s next 50 years and navigate creatively in an era of dynamic change, keeping faith with Pitzer’s mission to

produce civic-minded and socially responsible leaders in all walks of life. Established in 1963, Pitzer College was the fifth undergraduate college to join The Claremont Colleges consortium. Though it is the youngest of the undergraduate colleges in the consortium, Pitzer has enjoyed one of the steepest trajectories of success, across multiple dimensions. Over the last decade, the College has made notable advancements in the breadth and depth of its academic programs, as well as in faculty, student achievement and diversity. Likewise, the financial position of the College has strengthened both through judicious financial leadership and the success of its advancement activities. Throughout, Pitzer has retained its historic commitment to living its values and embracing its distinctive characteristics. History and the Modern Pitzer Identity Pitzer College was named for benefactor, orange grower, and noted philanthropist Russell K. Pitzer. The college began in 1963 as a residential liberal arts campus for women, with a curricular emphasis in the social and behavioral sciences. The first entering class of 13 students, along with the founding faculty and staff, came to Pitzer for its promise of a different kind of liberal arts education and the opportunity to innovate. With this foundation in place, the college grew quickly. It achieved accreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges in 1965, and in 1970 made the decision to open its doors to men to broaden both the appeal of the college and its impact. Over the following three decades, Pitzer continued to thrive. Some key examples include a 37-place improvement in U.S. News and World Report rankings since 2004 (from #70 to #33) and a 72 percent growth in its endowment since 2009. The modern Pitzer reflects both its earliest history and a full generation of growth and innovation. It has earned, and carefully guards, a series of strategically crafted distinctive characteristics that are widely supported by its community. They emerged organically from the College’s founding principles and were given greater voice in this last generation. They constitute a vital foundation and a frame for the challenges of the future. The College’s core values and distinctiveness serve as its anchor and compass for the future;


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Pitzer does not just teach its values, but endeavors to be a living embodiment of them. As one member of the community put it, “At Pitzer, you’re not just examining the petri dish; you’re also in the petri dish!” These core values include: Social Responsibility: At Pitzer, students spend four years examining the ethical implications of knowledge and individual responsibility in making the world better. They learn to evaluate the impact of individual and collective actions manifested in social and political policies. Intercultural Understanding: Intercultural understanding enables Pitzer students to comprehend issues and events through cultural lenses beyond their own. From Los Angeles to Botswana to Nepal, Pitzer students are educated to thrive and succeed in an ever-changing global community. Interdisciplinary Learning: Pitzer College students are taught to challenge traditional ways of learning and to make connections between academic disciplines. Faculty is organized by field groups instead of traditional academic departments. Scientists, sociologists, historians, writers, and artists influence each other’s work and often teach courses together. Student Engagement: Pitzer’s unique curriculum allows students the flexibility to direct their own educational and career paths by creating their own majors. In addition, students are active members of college governance, contributing to decisions on everything from academic policies and faculty promotion and tenure (two students serve as voting members on the Appointments, Promotion, and Tenure Committee) to public art displays and building design. Environmental Sustainability: Sensitivity to and preservation of the environment is a key value of Pitzer College. Campus landscaping utilizes drought-resistant native plants, and the College is proud of its many LEED-certified sustainable buildings. Students shape their daily activities, programming, and studies to leave the environment and the world stronger than how they found it. Students interested in environmental issues find Pitzer an exciting living and learning laboratory. Pitzer has been on the cutting edge of liberal arts higher education since its founding. Most top liberal arts colleges have followed Pitzer’s lead (consciously or not) and now espouse a similar set of core values. As evidence of this, in 2014, Pitzer’s Board of Trustees voted to approve a plan developed by a working group of trustees, students, faculty and staff, to divest substantially all of the endowment from publicly-traded stocks of fossil fuel companies, involving the sale of about $4.4 million in such investments. The College also established a sub-fund within the endowment to focus on investments that promote sustainability, and set ambitious new goals for environmental stewardship on campus. Pitzer thus became the first college in Southern California and the first private college in all of California to join a national campaign to divest from fossil fuel stocks. Mission “Pitzer College produces engaged, socially responsible citizens of the world through an academically rigorous, interdisciplinary liberal arts education emphasizing social justice, intercultural understanding, and environmental sensitivity. The meaningful participation of


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students, faculty, and staff in college governance and academic program design is a Pitzer core value. Our community thrives within the mutually supportive framework of The Claremont Colleges, which provide an unsurpassed breadth of academic, athletic, and social opportunities." Profile of President Oliver On July 1, 2016, Melvin L. Oliver became Pitzer College’s sixth president. An award-winning scholar, professor, researcher, author, and administrator, President Oliver served as the executive dean at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s College of Letters and Science, where he was also the SAGE Sara Miller McCune Dean of Social Sciences and a professor of sociology. During his 12-year tenure as dean, he championed increased access for underrepresented students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as faculty diversity. At the undergraduate level, he was a co-principal investigator of a successful McNair Scholars Program that prepares qualified underrepresented and first-generation undergraduates for entrance to a PhD program in all fields of study. Under Dr. Oliver’s leadership and through funding from the National Science Foundation, the UCSB Division of Social Sciences experienced a 40 percent increase in underrepresented graduate students since 2004. He was also a guiding force behind an innovative initiative designed to hire senior ladder-rank faculty whose research and scholarship relate to the Black World. From 1996-2004, he served as vice president of the Asset Building and Community Development Program at the Ford Foundation, where he refocused the foundation’s poverty reduction programming toward building human, financial, social and environmental assets of the world’s poor. As a professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 1978-96, he was named California Professor of the Year and received the Harriet and Charles Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award. As a founding director of the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty he has raised millions of dollars to support scholarly work in the area of racial and urban inequality. President Oliver has come to the College at a key moment in Pitzer’s trajectory, a time when the College must carefully steward current resources, but also look toward the future. President Oliver has been tasked with effectively broadcasting Pitzer’s distinct ethos, culture, and values in an increasingly uncertain market for liberal arts, and in so doing has the opportunity to further the College’s stature as a national and global leader. The next VPFAT must help the President in his efforts to continue to unite the Pitzer community around a vision that builds distinctiveness and success in a financially sustainable manner. The Claremont Colleges Patterned after the Oxford-Cambridge collaborative model, The Claremont Colleges consistently place at the top of national college rankings including Forbes, Money, US News and World Report and the Princeton Review. Each nationally-recognized college has its own campus, students and faculty and a distinctive mission. Each offers excellent curricula, small classes, distinguished professors and personalized instruction. In addition to taking classes at their home campus, students may register for classes among 2,500 offered at The Claremont Colleges. The Colleges have 7,700 students and 3,600 faculty and staff on more than 560 acres at the eastern edge of Los Angeles County.


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The colleges with contiguous campuses generate an endless variety of intellectual, cultural and social activities including arts, distinguished guest speakers series, and a robust athletic program. In addition to Pitzer, the Colleges include Claremont McKenna College, Harvey Mudd College, Pomona College, the founding member for the consortium, Scripps College, Claremont Graduate University and Keck Graduate Institute.

The ability to provide students with extra breadth by virtue of their ability to cross-register has allowed Pitzer to focus its resources on a narrower set of priorities. The consortium has also been crucial for faculty in smaller field groups to be able to network with peer faculty at the other colleges. Within the consortium, Pitzer, Scripps, and Claremont McKenna share the W.M. Keck Science Department, which is the largest department among all of The Claremont Colleges. The consortium is an enormous asset for Pitzer, but also poses challenges for the seven colleges’ leadership and requires effort to fulfill its potential. The consortium enhances Pitzer’s ability to recruit and retain faculty, providing a critical mass of faculty collaborators equivalent to a first-rank research university. The college’s proximity to Los Angeles attracts two-career couples and the Claremont area is an especially fine location for families, with reasonable housing costs and strong public schools compared to other metropolitan areas. The Claremont University Consortium The Claremont University Consortium (CUC) provides jointly funded key services to the member institutions of The Claremont Colleges. These services include the library and bookstore, student health services, employee benefits and campus security among others. All together, there are 28 services and programs offered through Claremont Colleges Services (CCS). Colleges can opt-in to whichever programs or services they want to participate in and there are various formula for the appropriate contribution of each college to each service. The VPFAT will be deeply involved with the Consortium and will serve on The Claremont Colleges Business and Financial Officers Committee which meets frequently. Faculty Pitzer is home to 82 full-time and 34 part-time faculty. Among the full-time faculty, more than half are full professor, with the remainder evenly split between associate and assistant professors. The college remains committed to the teacher/scholar model, with most faculty teaching five courses over two semesters. Scholarship and research are increasingly important components in faculty promotion and tenure, but teaching and learning in and outside the classroom remain the defining feature of an academic position at Pitzer. Academic Life While a broadly based liberal arts institution, the social and behavioral sciences are especially strong and popular. As of 2017, Pitzer’s most popular majors included psychology, environmental analysis, economics, sociology, political science, English, and media studies. Environmental analysis continues its growth as one of the most popular majors on campus, in line with Pitzer’s focus on environmental sustainability. Science has been a major area of growth, with almost 15 percent of students majoring in a STEM-related field. Pitzer students are able to take courses at the other undergraduate institutions; the average Pitzer student currently takes 50% of their classes physically at Pitzer proper, 10% in Keck Science, and 40% at the other four Claremont


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Colleges. Pitzer is a net exporter of students to the other Colleges. Pitzer jointly operates the Keck Science Department with Claremont McKenna and Scripps. A point of pride, the student-faculty ratio is now 10:1, an improvement from 14:1 just a decade ago. There are four centers and institutes on campus, designed to foster faculty-student research: the Community Engagement Center, the Firestone Center for Restoration Ecology, the Marquet/Ferre Vaccine Research Center, and the Munroe Center for Social Inquiry. Pitzer is also home to the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability, the first conservancy devoted to Southern California environmental issues, for which the college received $10 million from the Pritzker Family Foundation, its largest gift to date. Demonstrated student engagement in global social responsibility has helped the college achieve national leadership in the area of Fulbright Fellowships. More than 50% of Pitzer students participate in study abroad programs including the locally operated program in Costa Rica. The Chronicle of Higher Education ranked Pitzer College as the top producer of Fulbright Fellows among all U.S. liberal arts colleges for the past four years. Pitzer has been the national leader in Fulbright Fellowships per 1,000 students for 10 of the last 11 years. Students and alumni have been awarded a total of 182 Fulbrights in less than 15 years. Finally, local community involvement is an important academic priority at Pitzer. One hundred percent of students engage in community-based teaching and learning before graduation. Enrollment Pitzer College enrolled 1,089 students in more than 40 fields of study, leading to the Bachelor of Arts degree. The acceptance rate for the entering class of Fall 2017 was 15.6 percent, continuing a trend of year-over-year increased selectivity, compared to a 26 percent acceptance rate in 2009. By this measure, Pitzer is one of the top 20 most selective colleges in the country. Students of ethnically diverse backgrounds come to Pitzer from all parts of the United States, as well as nearly 20 other countries. In 2017, 44 percent of students in the admitted class were underrepresented minorities and 11 percent were international students. In keeping with the college’s access and social justice missions, 12 percent of admitted students were first-generation college-goers. Students participate in a multitude of clubs and activities. Pitzer participates in NCAA Division III athletics and Pitzer and Pomona students compete together as one team. Tuition and Financial Aid Pitzer’s tuition and fees this year are $52,236 and with room and board total charges are $68,500. More than 80% of Pitzer’s revenue comes from students. Pitzer grants only need-based financial aid. More than 40% of its students received aid this year; 13% received Pell grants. The tuition discount rate is 30% and Pitzer operates a need aware admissions policy controlling the amount budgeted for financial aid. The average level of debt for the graduating class of 2016 was $21,569 which is significantly below the national average. Pitzer met 100% of the need of all of its admitted students. Pitzer has been regularly increasing tuition around 3.5% and intends to do so for next year. This increase should keep Pitzer’s tuition near the bottom of the Claremont Colleges.


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Board of Trustees The Pitzer Board of Trustees consists of approximately 27 members. Trustees give of their time, talent, and resources to safeguard the traditions, assets, and values of the college; ensure the college’s strategic direction and mission are followed and its enhanced capacity to serve society is met; and provide oversight and guidance for the activities of the college. The Board is chaired by Harold A. Brown, a partner at Gang Tyre Ramer & Brown. President’s Cabinet There are seven senior officers on the president’s cabinet. Members include: the Vice President for College Advancement; the Vice President for Admission & Financial Aid; the Vice President for Communications, Marketing & Public Relations; the Vice President for Academic Affairs & Dean of Faculty; the Vice President for Student Affairs; the Chief of Staff and the Vice President for Finance, Administration and Treasurer. Shared Governance Pitzer’s system of highly participatory college governance makes it virtually unique among American colleges. Faculty, students, and staff serve together on nearly all standing committees, including those that deal with the most vital and sensitive issues of the college community. All major decisions are approved by the community-wide College Council. There is a Budget Implementation Committee (BIC) on which the new VPFAT will sit along with the Dean of the College, faculty, students and staff. This committee reviews all budget requests and makes recommendations on them. This system of governance is one of the highest expressions of Pitzer’s founding idea of participation and community, and offers members of the college community an active role in setting institutional priorities and shaping academic and student life. Facilities Pitzer’s campus is contiguous to those of the other Claremont Colleges. Students, faculty and staff move freely among all the campuses. The College is continuing to implement Phase III of

the Campus Master Plan, created in 2001 and set to expire in 2020, and the Housing Master Plan, developed in 2003. Among other things, the plan calls for the third and final phase of construction of Pitzer’s residential community. There are also three other capital projects before the College—a new science building to be built in conjunction with Scripps and Claremont McKenna, the Robert Redford Conservancy and the development of land recently purchased across Claremont Blvd which is to be developed into athletic fields and parking;

this will free land on the central campus for future development. In 2016, Pitzer completed its five-year tactical plan. 1 For more information on Pitzer’s Campus Master Plan, please visit: http://pitweb.pitzer.edu/institutional-research/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/08/MasterPlan.pdf 2 For more information on Pitzer’s Housing Master Plan, please visit: https://www.pitzer.edu/institutional-research/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/08/housing_master_plan.pdf 3 For more information on Pitzer’s Tactical Plan, please visit: http://pitweb.pitzer.edu/institutional-research/wp-content/uploads/sites/33/2014/02/2011-2016_Tactical_Plan-summary.pdf


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The new science building will cost about $100 million and will be built on Scripps land. Pitzer is working to raise the $35 million contribution that it will need towards the facility. It is likely that it will need to use some debt to complete its contribution. Endowment and Advancement. The endowment was $132.9 million on June 30, 2017. One of Pitzer’s most compelling needs is to grow its endowment. In many contexts, such an endowment would seem large but it pales in comparison to the endowments of the other Claremont Colleges: Harvey Mudd ($300 million), Scripps ($343 million), CMC ($784 million), Pomona ($2.17 billion). Pitzer launched three successful campaigns over the last fourteen years. The last and largest of the campaigns, 50Forward, included 7,413 donors, 25,706 gifts, and pledges totaling $51,269,469 — exceeding its $50 million goal. Gifts included contributions of more than $5.65 million to provide increased financial aid to bright and aspiring students, exceeding the $3.25 million goal; a $10 million gift to launch the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability, positioning Pitzer as a leader in environmental research and action; and more than $9 million to enhance academic programming and propel groundbreaking research. Additionally, the college’s annual fund goal was surpassed by more than $3 million; a mixed use academic/residence hall was named by four trustees, and donors, considering their own future as well as the college have promised more than $5 million in planned gifts and bequests. Nearly all of Pitzer’s philanthropic support derives from individuals in the form of major gifts, deferred gifts and contributions to the annual fund. In the most recent fiscal year, 29 percent of alumni and 43 percent of parents contributed to Pitzer and the annual fund raised approximately $2.2 million. The college seeks to grow the fund and to significantly enhance alumni participation rates, especially among younger classes. Finances Pitzer’s operating budget for fiscal year 2018 is $62.5 million. Pitzer budget is more than 80% dependent on student generated revenue with the other revenues coming from the spending policy draw from the endowment and from the annual fund. The spending policy is to draw between 4% and 4.5% of the average of the last 16 quarters of the endowment corpus. Pitzer is highly leveraged with more than $80 million in debt. The College refinanced much of its debt in 2017 resulting in significant savings attributable in part to a lower interest rate. Beyond the normal budget categories, the College spent $8.4 million to support joint programs and programs/services provided by TCCS. A challenge for Pitzer is that the joint and TCCS programs are frequently quite expensive and Pitzer is often stressed to make its contribution. The College’s budget also reflects its commitment to social justice. It has made a commitment of a staff starting wage that is no less than 10% above the Los Angeles County living wage. The budget guidelines include an amount that will move Pitzer’s starting hourly staff wage to between $13.15 and $13.25 per hour. The College pays faculty the same in all disciplines with faculty salaries increasing based on longevity. The College also has a generous early retirement package beginning at age 58 to which it is committed in order to maintain a relatively young and vibrant faculty. Location - Claremont and Los Angeles The College is located in Claremont, California, a close-knit community of 35,000


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situated in eastern Los Angeles County at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. Claremont enjoys an excellent climate year round, with skiing, hiking, deserts, the Pacific Ocean, and one of the world’s largest and most electrifying metropolitan areas all within an hour’s drive. Downtown Los Angeles is easily reached in less than one hour via the Metrolink commuter rail. LA/Ontario International Airport, a 15-minute drive from campus, offers more than 120 daily flights and nonstop service to 15 cities. Los Angeles is the second largest city in the United States and the most populous city in California, and is an international center for the arts, technology, and trade, and the North American capital of the Pacific Rim. Furthermore, Pitzer’s proximity to Los Angeles allows for both interaction with the larger Los Angeles academic community and also meaningful engagement with the diverse groups that make up the region. The Position The vice president for finance, administration and treasurer will steward the College’s financial, physical and non-academic human resources and will support the board’s investment, budget, audit and facilities committees. The VPFAT reports directly to the president. S/he serves on the Budget Implementation Committee and the Claremont Colleges Business and Finance Officers Committee. The VPFAT works closely with the Directors of those central service agencies and with Pitzer personnel that provide general support for the College in the areas of computing, mail, accounting, plant maintenance, telephone, security, food service and purchasing services. The direct reports to this position include the associate vp/associate treasurer, assistant vice president of facilities, assistant vice president of human resources and director information technology. The VPFAT is responsible for developing the budget and providing the leadership, vision and analytical framework necessary to develop and oversee prudent fiscal strategies that assure the implementation of the board approved financial plan. The VPFAT will be viewed as partner and problem solver who will work actively and creatively with: the vice president for academic affairs/Dean of the College to ensure funding and administrative solutions to support the academic mission of the College; the vice president for college advancement to support overall fundraising goals and provide the infrastructure necessary to assure donors of the stewardship of their contributions; the vice president of admissions and financial aid to implement enrollment and financial aid goals; to work as a team with other member of the Cabinet to advance College goals; and to work collaboratively with college constituencies to move the agenda of the College forward. The VPFAT is expected to engage in a collegial and transparent way with all areas of the College to strengthen the overall effectiveness of the College’s financial operations, to facilitate the growth of revenue, to strategically use all available financial resources, and to provide timely and accurate financial information. The VPFAT should be a thought leader on the effective and strategic use of College resources. Key Opportunities and Challenges for the Vice President for Finance, Administration and Treasurer In order to ensure the continued success and forward momentum of Pitzer College, the President, the Board and the College needs a VPFAT who will address the following opportunities and challenges: Gain Trust and Communicate in a Meaningful and Transparent Manner Pitzer College has an ongoing commitment to the principles of shared governance. It functions by


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eliciting input from all constituencies and openly communicating priorities and decisions. The VPFAT must be an astute, politic, and experienced administrator who believes in the value of shared governance and who can be successful in it. Pitzer’s academic, student, and staff leaders require a level of engagement and commitment that the new VPFAT will have to demonstrate in order to earn the trust of these groups. The VPFAT will value and promote such open communication and ensure that all groups are heard. The new vice president must be able to communicate clear and concise financial information to all college constituents in a way that inspires understanding and trust in the information. Develop a New Budget Model The College has used an incremental budget process for many years that takes last year’s budget and adds to it and only projects out for the budget year. The VPFAT must develop a new budget model that allows for designing a budget based on priorities and that allows for reallocation of resources where appropriate. The new budget system will be an inclusive process that is based on data and done in a timely manner so that all constituencies are able to provide input that can be considered and incorporated into the final budget. Develop a Multi – Year Financial Forecast The new VPFAT needs to develop a robust, multi-year financial forecasting tool so that the College can forecast various future outcomes. This model should be used to cost out strategic initiatives as they are proposed and should provide the College with a tool to see the implications of different resource allocations. Embrace Collaborative Decision-Making. The new vice president must be comfortable and enjoy working in an environment where collaborative decision-making is the culture, where it is expected that information is shared prior to decisions being made and that feedback and evaluation are provided after decisions are made. Thought Partner on the New Strategic Plan The College plans to develop a new strategic plan. The new VPFAT needs to be a thought partner with the College on how to best leverage financial resources and where the best opportunities are for the college. The financial forecasting model should be used to cost out the strategic plan and should be used as a tool in choosing various futures. Fundraising and Endowment As the College looks to begin a campaign to raise funds for the Keck Science Facility, the VPFAT must be a strategic partner with the vp of college advancement to ensure the appropriate financing for the campaign and to help facilitate the success of the campaign. Development of the Costa Rica Field Station The College operates a field station in Costa Rica where it is planning on building dormitory space. This project will require the involvement and oversight of the VPFAT in a collaborative manner with International Programs. Provide Leadership to the Finance Division The vice president must have excellent management skills to lead the finance and administrative division of the College. S/he needs to be attentive to the staff and to provide appropriate development opportunities. The vice president needs to have a collegial style and effectively communicate with all members of the division; s/he needs to be attentive to the welfare of the staff.


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Provide Exceptional Customer Service to the Campus The finance and administration division provides many services to the campus. The new vice president must insure that all areas of the division are customer focused in its dealings with students, faculty, staff and others. Qualifications and Characteristics The successful candidate will bring most, if not all, of the following skills and experience:

1. Financial Management: Expertise in finance and accounting, including demonstrated and thorough understanding of financial controls, budgeting, and investment management. Understands, remains current on and applies best practices and trends in using exceptional analytical skills and judgment.

2. Administration: Exceptional knowledge of business management and operations, Knowledge of performance management methods, process management and change management. Proven ability to manage capital programs, intellectual property, facilities and information technology.

3. Financial Regulations and Compliance: Expert knowledge of laws and regulations which pertain to the management of an institution’s financial operations; must be capable of interpreting them for purposes of implementation and determining the impact on the College and current policies/practices. Knowledge of or ability to quickly learn regulations pertaining to the financial operations of a postsecondary education institution.

4. Communication: Demonstrates effective and clear communication skills in English both orally and in writing. Must be able to explain complex budget information to a wide audience. Shares appropriate information with senior management and direct reports in a timely manner; demonstrates openness to different viewpoints; communicates in a manner which demonstrates sensitivity to diverse backgrounds.

5. Decision-Making: Makes timely and sound decisions. Identifies and understands issues, problems, and opportunities. Takes action that is consistent with available facts, constraints, and probable consequences. Includes others in the decision-making process as warranted. Adeptly responds to unexpected developments with timely changes to decisions as needed.

6. Trust Building: Meets commitments that contribute to addressing the interests, needs and concerns of others. Identifies and communicates shared interests and goals. Shows respect for others. Develops, maintains, and strengthens partnerships inside or outside the organization who can provide information, assistance, and support. Demonstrates honesty and behaves in a consistent manner. Demonstrates high ethical and moral standards and communicates similar expectations of others.

7. Strategic Planning: Formulates strategies that are achievable, cost-effective, and address organizational goals by themselves or in coordination with other strategies. Formulates strategies that take the organization's strengths and weaknesses into account. Researches, interprets, and reports on long-term trends for the purpose of formulating policy and strategy.

8. Valuing Diversity and Inclusion: Values diversity as exhibited in hiring choices, assignments made, teams formed, and interaction with others. Shows respect for people regardless of race, gender, ability or background. Actively seeks different viewpoints


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and leverages the benefits of multiple perspectives. Seeks to understand the perspective of others when disagreement arises and responds appropriately.

9. Advanced Computer Skills: Computerized financial/accounting systems and Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook. Knowledge of database management and reports. Ability to learn to use additional software or computerized systems as needed.

10. Development of Staff: Flexible interpersonal style to help others develop their capabilities. Provides helpful feedback, effective coaching and maintains documentation. Collaborates with direct reports to set meaningful performance objectives. Recognizes and reinforces people's developmental efforts and improvements. Regularly meets with employees to review their development progress.

In addition, the candidate must have a commitment to the College’s core values and be student-centered.

Education: A bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution in finance, accounting, business management or related filed; or any combination of education, training or experience that provides the required knowledge, skills and abilities. An advanced degree or active CPA license is highly preferred. Experience: Must have at least ten years of financial management experience, preferably in a non-profit or higher education organization. Experience should include management of comparable functional scope and scale, a record of improved financial and administrative performance of institutions served, experience working with a governing board, as well as faculty and students. Applications, Inquiries, and Nominations A cover letter and resume should be uploaded to: http://lapovsky.hiringthing.com. Nominations, confidential inquiries and questions concerning this search may be directed to Lucie Lapovsky at [email protected] or 917-690-1958. Review of applications will begin immediately and candidate material received by April 18th will be assured full consideration although recruitment will continue until an appointment is announced. Pitzer College is being assisted by Lapovsky Consulting in this search.

Equal Employment Opportunity and Non-Discrimination Pitzer College adheres to both the letter and the spirit of Equal Employment opportunity and Affirmative Action. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, national or ethnic origin, sex, gender, age, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, disability, medical condition, or veteran status, in the administration of its admission policies, educational policies, scholarship and loan programs, athletic and other College-administered programs, and employment policies, and strongly encourages candidates from underrepresented groups to apply.

Documents

Vice President for Finance, Administration and Treasurerlapovsky.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/vpfat.pdf · Pitzer College Vice President for Finance, Administration and Treasurer