Assistant Vice President, Institutional Excellence & Continuous Improvement

What if institutional effectiveness was not just about measuring performance, but about making the institution better?

The American College of Financial Services is seeking an Assistant Vice President of Institutional Excellence & Continuous Improvement to help build the systems, disciplines, and culture that turn insight into action. This is not a traditional institutional effectiveness role.

We are looking for a leader who can connect assessment, accreditation, institutional performance, business process improvement, analytics, and change management to help us answer three critical questions:

• Are we accomplishing what we intended?
• What does the evidence tell us?
• What should we do differently because of it?

This role is designed for someone who sees assessment as more than compliance, data as more than reporting, and improvement as more than a one-time initiative.

Why The American College?

At The American College of Financial Services, we believe meaningful work should happen in a place where people genuinely want to work. We are proud to be a Great Place to Work Certified organization, with 90.6% of employees reporting that The College is a great place to work. As a mission-driven institution with an ambitious future, we are committed to continually improving how we serve students, partners, employees, and the financial services profession.

For the right leader, this role offers something particularly compelling: The opportunity to build.

You will help shape an expanded Institutional Excellence & Continuous Improvement capability and influence how we:

• Assess performance
• Improve operations
• Make decisions
• Manage change
• Measure institutional impact
• Advance strategic priorities

You will partner directly with executive and academic leadership while helping establish practices that become embedded in how The College operates. We're looking for someone who wants to help define what institutional excellence looks like here.

The Opportunity

Reporting within the Office of Administration, the AVP will serve as a strategic institutional leader responsible for fostering a culture of:

• Data-informed decision making
• Organizational effectiveness
• Accountability
• Operational excellence
• Continuous improvement

This role brings together institutional effectiveness, accreditation, strategic planning, organizational improvement, analytics, and change management to create a coordinated approach to institutional performance and continuous improvement.

The goal is more than good reporting. The goal is to create a College that learns from evidence, improves intentionally, and consistently demonstrates impact.

What You'll Build and Lead:

Institutional Excellence & Assessment

Lead The College's approach to assessing institutional and departmental effectiveness across non-academic functions.

You will:

• Establish assessment frameworks, standards, and methodologies
• Partner with leaders to define outcomes and measures of success
• Facilitate cycles of assessment, evaluation, reflection, and improvement
• Translate findings into actionable recommendations
• Build organizational capability in evidence-based decision making

Most importantly, you will help make assessment a tool for leadership, learning, decision-making, improvement, not simply compliance.

Strategic Alignment & Institutional Planning

Help connect institutional priorities to execution. Working closely with executive leadership and the Strategy Team.

You will:

• Align strategic goals with operational plans
• Connect priorities to organizational capacity and resources
• Monitor institutional performance
• Develop planning frameworks and performance measures
• Support prioritization and resource allocation decisions

You will provide leaders with the evidence needed to make informed decisions about readiness, capacity, investment, and organizational impact.

Business Process Improvement & Operational Effectiveness

Help The College examine and improve how work gets done.

You will:

• Lead process reviews and operational assessments
• Identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and unnecessary complexity
• Facilitate root-cause analysis and process redesign
• Develop a consistent improvement methodology
• Partner with departments to simplify, automate, consolidate, or redesign work
• Measure whether improvements achieve intended outcomes

Accreditation & Institutional Readiness

Lead accreditation readiness, assessment, evidence collection, and continuous improvement efforts for non-academic functions.

Working in partnership with the Vice Provost and institutional leaders, you will:

• Coordinate evidence and documentation processes
• Support institutional accreditation activities
• Maintain ongoing readiness for MSCHE and other applicable accrediting bodies
• Identify gaps, risks, and improvement opportunities
• Strengthen institutional understanding of accreditation standards and expectations

You will help ensure accreditation readiness becomes an ongoing discipline, not a periodic event.

Change Management & Organizational Readiness

Successful change requires more than a project plan.

You will establish and lead a consistent institutional approach to change management by:

• Assessing organizational readiness
• Evaluating stakeholder impacts
• Identifying adoption risks
• Supporting communication and engagement plans
• Monitoring implementation success and sustainability

Partnering with Human Resources, the Project Management Office, and functional leaders, you will help ensure that improvements are adopted, sustained, and reflected in everyday operations.

Evidence That Helps Leaders Lead

Champion the use of data across the institution.

You will:

• Develop dashboards, scorecards, and performance measures
• Strengthen institutional analytics and reporting capabilities
• Monitor performance, capacity, risk, and opportunity indicators
• Translate complex information into actionable insights
• Support institutional planning and continuous improvement efforts

Your job is not simply to produce data. It is to help leaders answer:

What does this mean?

Why does it matter?

What should we do next?

What Success Looks Like

Success in this role will help create an institution where:

• Leaders have clear measures of organizational effectiveness
• Assessment consistently leads to action and improvement
• Accreditation readiness remains strong and ongoing
• Institutional priorities are connected to measurable outcomes
• Business processes are continually improved
• Organizational capacity is strengthened
• Change is thoughtfully implemented and sustained
• Leaders use data to make better decisions
• Departments build their own capability to assess, learn, and improve
• Continuous improvement becomes part of how the College operates

Who We're Looking For

We're seeking someone equally comfortable with:

Strategy and execution.

Data and people.

Assessment and action.

You may have built your career in:

• Institutional Effectiveness
• Higher Education Administration
• Institutional Research
• Organizational Effectiveness
• Continuous Improvement
• Strategic Planning
• Change Management
• Process Improvement

What matters most is your ability to connect these disciplines and help leaders translate evidence into meaningful action.

Required Qualifications

• Master's degree in Higher Education Administration, Educational Leadership, Business Administration, Data Analytics, Public Administration, Organizational Development, or a related field
• Five or more years of progressively responsible experience in institutional effectiveness, assessment, institutional research, organizational effectiveness, planning, process improvement, change management, or related disciplines
• Experience translating assessment findings and analytics into decisions and measurable outcomes
• Experience supporting accreditation and institutional effectiveness initiatives in higher education
• Knowledge of regional accreditation standards, preferably Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE)
• Experience leading business process improvement and operational effectiveness initiatives
• Experience supporting organizational change, stakeholder engagement, readiness, and adoption efforts
• Experience developing dashboards, scorecards, performance metrics, and data visualizations
• Strong facilitation, consulting, coaching, and communication skills
• Demonstrated ability to influence across functions and organizational levels without relying on positional authority

You May Be a Great Fit If...

You naturally ask:

"How do we know?" when someone says something is working.

You believe collecting data without acting on it is a missed opportunity.

You can walk into a complicated process, identify underlying issues, and help people design a better way forward.

You understand accreditation matters but believe institutional effectiveness should create value every day, not only when accreditors visit.

You know sustainable change requires more than a project plan.

You can challenge thinking without alienating people.

You enjoy building capability in others rather than becoming the person who has to solve every problem.

And you're energized by helping an organization move from:

Evidence Insight Action Improvement Excellence

Why This Role Matters: Institutional excellence is not a destination. It is the discipline of continually asking whether we are fulfilling our mission, learning from evidence, improving our performance, and building the capacity to achieve greater impact. Institutional Excellence is the standard. Continuous Improvement is how we get there. If you are excited by the opportunity to help build that capability at a Great Place to Work Certified organization, we'd love to hear from you.

The College provides an award-winning culture and offers a competitive total compensation package that includes:

• Lucrative Time Off (25-40 Days PTO, Paid Family Medical Leave, 11 Paid Holidays)
• Retirement Savings Plan with Supplemental Contribution and Match
• Tuition Remission and Reimbursement
• Medical, Dental, Vision, and Wellness Benefits
• Company-paid Short-Term and Long-Term Disability
• Flexible, hybrid, and remote work schedules

Location: This role is remote however the incumbent will be expected to travel to the King of Prussia, PA campus as needed to support meetings, events, and other business activities.

The target hiring range is $109,200.00-$115,000.00

• The compensation offered to the selected candidate will be based on a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, departmental budgets, qualifications, experience, education, licenses, specialized skills, and training. The hiring range represents The College's good faith and reasonable estimate of possible compensation at the time of posting. This role will be posted through Friday, October 2, 2026.

In policy and practice, we encourage diversity and provide equal employment opportunities to all individuals based on job-related qualifications and ability to perform a job. We are committed to maintaining a welcoming and inclusive environment.

The American College of Financial Services is an E-Verify Employer.