AVP for Enrollment and Student Success

Erikson Institute • Chicago, IL

2d

About The Position

The Associate Vice President (AVP) for Enrollment and Student Success provides strategic and operational leadership for the full student experience, from recruitment and admission through enrollment, academic progress, graduation, career development, and alumni engagement. The AVP leads the teams, systems, partnerships, and programs that support enrollment, persistence, completion, and long-term engagement, ensuring a welcoming, responsive, and student-centered experience. Working closely with the President, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs (SVPAA), faculty, and partners across the institute, the AVP develops strategies that increase enrollment, remove barriers to student success, and deepen alumni relationships. The role serves as a visible, trusted advocate for students at every stage of their relationship with Erikson. Erikson Institute seeks a leader who is student-centered, equity-minded, and mission-driven, with a track record of building trust across students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners. The ideal candidate combines strategic thinking with strong follow-through, uses data to inform decisions without losing sight of individual student needs, and is skilled at identifying and building new partnerships that advance student success. The AVP will work closely with professionals across early childhood, education, social work, mental health, and public policy, fields at the heart of Erikson's mission to improve outcomes for young children, families, and communities.

Requirements

• A master’s degree in higher education, student affairs, business, social work, organizational leadership, or a related field.
• Seven+ years of progressively responsible leadership experience in higher education, enrollment management, student affairs, or a closely related area.
• Demonstrated success developing enrollment pipelines, institutional partnerships, or student-success strategies that span multiple stages of the student lifecycle.
• Experience supervising staff, managing budgets, and leading cross-functional teams.
• Demonstrated use of data to establish priorities, assess effectiveness, and improve outcomes.
• Demonstrated experience serving diverse student populations, first-generation students, international students, or students from historically excluded communities.
• Excellent interpersonal, organizational, communication, problem-solving, and relationship-management skills.
• Demonstrated commitment to equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, and student-centered practice.

Nice To Haves

• A doctoral degree or substantial progress toward a doctoral degree in a relevant field.
• Experience in a graduate, professional, or specialized higher education institution.
• Experience overseeing recruitment, admission, advising, student engagement, career services, or alumni relations.
• Experience establishing partnerships with employers, colleges, school-districts, or community-based organizations.
• Knowledge of graduate enrollment trends, adult-learner needs, online education, financial-aid processes, accessibility requirements, and student-success practices.
• Experience with customer-relationship management (CRM) systems, student-information systems, or enrollment analytics platforms.

Responsibilities

• Set the institution-wide enrollment strategy, goals, and priorities, and hold the Director of Admissions accountable for execution and results.
• Direct an integrated prospective-student journey from inquiry through enrollment, with clear service standards, decision points, and handoffs across units.
• Support senior leadership in establishing differentiated enrollment goals.
• Partner with academic program directors on differentiated recruitment strategies for degree and certificate programs.
• Build and sustain strategic pipelines with colleges, school districts, employers, governmental entities, community-based organizations, and other mission-aligned partners, including models that support enrollment, affordability, and student success.
• Use market intelligence, enrollment-funnel data, conversion rates, demographic trends, and program-level performance to set priorities and allocate resources.
• Partner with Marketing and Communications to align enrollment goals, priority audiences, audience insights, and performance data with brand strategy, paid and organic campaigns, content production, and institutional messaging.
• Ensure recruitment and admission policies and practices are equitable, transparent, compliant, and responsive to graduate and adult learners.
• Set a coordinated student-success strategy spanning enrollment, orientation, advising, accessibility, engagement, career development, commencement, and alumni relations, and hold portfolio directors accountable for an integrated student experience.
• Serve as a senior institutional advocate for graduate students, adult learners, working professionals, online and international students, and students from historically and systemically excluded communities.
• Establish systematic approaches for gathering student feedback, identifying emerging needs, and ensuring that student perspectives inform institutional decisions and service improvements.
• Oversee integrated onboarding, advising, early-support, and reengagement strategies that remove barriers and strengthen persistence and completion.
• Set expectations for student engagement, belonging, leadership, and co-curricular learning, including meaningful connections with faculty, alumni, trustees, employers, and community partners.
• Coordinate the student-facing administration of academic-integrity processes and support faculty in maintaining academic standards and integrity.
• Provide executive oversight for student conduct, nonacademic grievances, crisis response, emergency student support, and coordinated student case management.
• Coordinate student-facing processes, communications, referrals, and support related to FERPA, Title IX, Clery, and other student-related requirements with the designated institutional officials who retain formal compliance authority.
• Ensure coordinated planning and communication across major student- and alumni-facing milestones and events, including enrollment, commencement, career, and alumni programs.
• Provide strategic oversight for career development and alumni engagement, including lifelong connection, career services, professional networks, alumni programming, leadership opportunities, and alumni feedback.
• Coordinate the alumni engagement strategy with Development’s responsibility for advancement strategy, fundraising, donor relationships, alumni giving, and gift stewardship.
• Lead, supervise, and develop the portfolio's Director-level leaders, with clear decision rights, performance expectations, and accountability for results.
• Oversee directors in maintaining aligned annual plans, budgets, service standards, performance measures, and improvement priorities.
• Lead portfolio planning and resource allocation, balancing enrollment, student-success, operational, and institutional priorities.
• Foster directors as an integrated leadership team to resolve cross-functional issues, strengthen handoffs, and eliminate service gaps or duplication.
• Maintain close partnerships with faculty and academic program leaders so that academic, enrollment, and student-support strategies reinforce one another.
• Partner with Financial Aid to align aid strategy, timelines, and student communications with enrollment goals.
• Partner with the Registrar and Student Accounts to establish service standards, handoffs, and coordinated student communications.
• Partner with Technology to establish priorities for student-facing systems, integrations, access, and user experience.
• Work with General Counsel and designated compliance officials to identify legal and regulatory requirements associated with the student experience from recruitment through alumni engagement.
• Partner with Institutional Research to define metrics, data, and analyses for implementation and ongoing evaluation of the strategic enrollment plan.
• Ensure portfolio adherence to applicable laws, regulations, institutional policies, and accreditation expectations, and serve as an executive sponsor for relevant accreditation, strategic-planning, and program-review work.
• Represent Erikson externally in senior-level professional, community, recruitment, and partnership settings, and perform other related duties as assigned by the President.
• Establish a portfolio scorecard with clear performance indicators for enrollment, persistence, engagement, satisfaction, graduation, career outcomes, partnerships, and alumni participation.
• Review performance with directors on a regular cycle, identify variances and emerging risks, and require corrective action when results fall short of expectations.
• Provide concise, decision-oriented reports to the President, SVPAA, Board of Trustees, faculty, and institutional committees.
• Lead portfolio-wide assessment and continuous improvement across the enrollment funnel and student lifecycle, using evidence to refine strategy, services, policies, staffing, and resource allocation.
• Ensure that graduate employment, career progression, alumni outcomes, and alumni feedback inform academic programs, student services, enrollment strategy, and institutional storytelling.
• Build a culture of evidence-informed decision-making, shared accountability, learning, and continuous improvement across the portfolio.

Benefits

• Erikson Institute is an equal opportunity employer. We consider all applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, marital status, age, disability, veteran status, family responsibilities, or any other classes protected by federal, state, or local laws. In addition, Erikson Institute provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities in accordance with the Americans With Disabilities Act and applicable state and local laws (including during the application or hiring process).

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director