"Chief Academic Officer & Vice President, Global Academic Learning Enterprise"

Chief Academic Officer & Vice President, Global Academic Learning Enterprise

Office of the Chief Learner Experience & Success Officer

Exempt, Regular, Full-Time

The CAO is a bold, visionary, and humble leader who believes deeply in UMGC’s mission to transform lives through access to high-quality education. This leader brings the courage to challenge legacy models, the discipline to anchor decisions in evidence and outcomes, and the humility to lead through partnership in a highly matrixed environment. The CAO plays a critical role in advancing UMGC’s Innovation Forward agenda and Strategic Plan, ensuring academic strategy evolves in step with institutional priorities, emerging technologies, and the changing needs of adult learners and employers.

Through this role, the CAO ensures UMGC’s academic enterprise remains trusted, differentiated, and future-ready, combining rigor with relevance, scale with quality, and innovation with integrity. The successful candidate will bring an incessant passion and experience in challenging the status quo, leading change in education, and embracing new technologies in order to improve learner experiences.

Relocation to the Maryland / DC /Northern Virginia metro area is required. Upon relocation, this position operates in a hybrid model with three (3) days per week on-site.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

Academic Product Strategy, Portfolio Stewardship and Enterprise Transformation

• Own and execute UMGC’s academic product strategy and portfolio, including undergraduate, graduate, credential, and non-degree offerings that prioritize learner outcomes, skills attainment and workforce relevance in alignment with UMGC’s strategic plan and Innovation Forward goals
• Lead the Schools as academic product portfolios, ensuring each portfolio has clear academic intent, outcomes, differentiation, and sustainability
• Partner with other senior level colleagues to drive key institutional metrics including student success, satisfaction, persistence, retention and graduation
• Lead the evolution toward coherent, stackable learning pathways that support lifelong learning
• Align academic offerings with labor-market data, employer needs, and industry-validated skills
• Establish decision frameworks for program approval, evolution, prioritization, investment, and sunsetting, grounded in academic quality, learner outcomes, workforce relevance, and mission alignment
• Hold accountability for academic product health at the portfolio level, partnering with the Center Institutional Effectiveness, Marketing, Learner Lifecycle Success, Global Military Operations, Global Workforce Partnerships, Experience Strategy & Design, Product Management, and Analytics teams to monitor quality, outcomes, relevance, and long-term viability
• Establish a curriculum performance framework using analytics and assessment to drive improvement Leadership of Schools

Leadership of Schools

• Lead and develop Portfolio VPs/Deans as academic portfolio leaders, accountable for the performance, relevance, and integrity of their respective product portfolios
• Ensure clarity of roles, decision rights, and accountability across the academic organization within a matrixed operating model
• Enable cross-portfolio alignment while preserving appropriate disciplinary depth, innovation, and differentiation
• Foster a culture of evidence-based decision-making, continuous improvement, and shared ownership of learner outcomes

Academic Quality, Integrity & Accreditation

• Serve as UMGC’s chief steward of academic quality, rigor, and integrity across all learning models and modalities
• Define and govern the University’s academic quality framework, including learning outcomes, assessment expectations, curricular standards, and academic policies
• Serve as executive lead for institutional and specialized accreditation, compliance, academic reporting, and regulatory alignment with regional, professional, and governmental bodies
• Maintain rigorous compliance with accreditation standards and regulatory requirements, upholding transparency, integrity, and public trust while also appropriately continuing to advocate in the best interest of our learners
• Provide executive oversight to ensure positioning of the Registrar as a strategic enabler of learner mobility and progression, ensuring that academic policies, credit practices, and supporting systems minimize friction and accelerate learner advancement
• Leads registrar operations that effectively support transfer pathways, prior learning assessments (PLA), stackable credentials, and lifelong learning, while aligning with modern academic models

Faculty Excellence & Academic Leadership

• Establish the vision, expectations, and governance structures that support faculty excellence in a centrally designed, technology-enabled academic environment
• Advance faculty development, evaluation, and engagement models aligned to evidence-based teaching, learner success, and modern instructional practices embracing the role of human-centered AI
• Champion faculty as essential academic partners responsible for teaching quality, disciplinary expertise, assessment integrity, and learner engagement
• Lead a team of subject matter experts including portfolio VPs, portfolio directors and collegiate faculty in defining, teaching and evaluating the knowledge, skills, abilities, and dispositions needed to transform learners' lives

Workforce Alignment & Academic Outcomes

• Interpret workforce trends, employer expectations, and labor market insights to inform academic priorities, learning outcomes, and credential intent, in partnership with the CLESO and Global Workforce Solutions
• Define skills, competencies, and credentials to ensure UMGC offerings remain relevant, credible, and valuable in evolving labor markets
• Hold accountability for ensuring UMGC credentials represent clear academic and professional value without prescribing learning experience design or delivery mechanisms
• Ensure workforce relevance in partnership with the Global Workforce Solutions team and by engaging employers through advisory boards

Learning Innovation – Academic Direction & Authorization

• Champion responsible integration of AI across curriculum, instruction, assessment, and support.
• Establish academic guardrails, success criteria, and evaluation standards for new learning models, assessment approaches, and the responsible use of emerging technologies, including AI
• Evaluate and authorize academic innovations for scale based on evidence, outcomes, and academic integrity
• Partner with Marketing and Learning Product Development leaders to ensure academic intent is translated into execution through defined governance, handoffs, and accountability structures

Enterprise Leadership & Collaboration

• Serve as a senior member of the executive leadership team, contributing to institutional strategy, transformation, and long-term sustainability
• Collaborate as an equal partner with student-facing leaders to co-own learner success outcomes.
• Collaborate closely with Marketing, Experience Strategy, Learning Product Development, Learner Enrollment, Learner Lifecycle Success, Global Workforce Solutions, Institutional Effectiveness, and Technology leaders to support the full learner lifecycle
• Represent UMGC as a national leader in next-generation public higher education, contributing to policy, accreditation evolution, and sector-wide innovation

Required education & experience:

A demonstrated track record of achieving results and getting things done; an earned terminal degree (Ph.D., Ed.D., or equivalent) from a regionally accredited institution of higher learning; at least 10 years of senior academic leadership experience; success with national, nontraditional, adult-serving, innovation-oriented organizations delivering through online and hybrid models; demonstrated success in stewarding academic quality, accreditation, faculty leadership, and portfolio-level academic decision-making; data-informed leader comfortable using performance, outcomes, and product management to guide academic strategy; as well as evidence of challenging status quo and expanding beyond typical practices in previous roles.

Preferred experience:

Demonstrated success leading large-scale academic transformation; operating within product-oriented or skills-based and outcomes-driven academic learning models; leadership in AI-enabled learning or academic operations; operating effectively in matrixed organizations with shared accountability; oversight of accreditation, curriculum governance, and registrar functions; and strong fluency in learning outcomes assessment, academic governance, and compliance in online or hybrid environments.

All submissions should include a cover letter and resume.