Dean of the Division of Continuing Education

Harvard University’s Dean of the Division of Continuing Education oversees a powerful global education platform and the primary outreach arm for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), serving more than 30,000 part-time learners across the globe each year. With a deep commitment to academic excellence and expanding opportunities for learning and educational innovation, the dean of DCE leads the Division in its mission to extend Harvard to part-time and summer learners with the academic ability, curiosity, and drive to succeed in rigorous Harvard courses and programs. Harvard University invites nominations and applications for this important FAS leadership position.

Division of Continuing Education The Division of Continuing Education (DCE) is a unit of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences that was created in 1975 to consolidate the Harvard Extension School (HES, established in 1909) and the Harvard Summer School (HSS, established in 1871). Today, DCE also comprises the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement (HILR, established in 1977), and the Harvard Professional Development Programs (HPDP, established in 2011). DCE allows Harvard to serve the learning needs of students across the lifespan, and faculty who want to extend their teaching to reach non-traditional learners.

Since 2013, DCE has been led by Dean Huntington Lambert. Under Dean Lambert’s transformative leadership, DCE has focused on strengthening the academic quality of its programs and enhancing student services, while also building an infrastructure that supports continued innovation and growth. Key aspects of DCE’s mission include: 1) expanding access to educational opportunities for part-time, non-traditional learners; 2) providing a revenue stream for FAS; and 3) enabling faculty experimentation and innovation in teaching and learning.

DCE is visible and highly regarded across the University as a place where innovation happens. DCE is recognized for its openness, energy, and commitment to the mission of extending Harvard to meet the growing demand for lifelong learning, and for the role that the Division plays enabling faculty-driven innovation within the broader Harvard community. DCE has a loyal following among students, staff, and faculty thanks to its emphasis on a highly responsive, customer-service approach and nimble flexibility that welcomes experimentation and facilitates the execution of ideas fully and quickly.

DCE is fully integrated into the FAS, reflecting DCE’s core in the liberal arts tradition. The dean of DCE reports directly to the dean of the FAS and the FAS Standing Committee on Continuing Education provides its faculty governance and oversight. DCE is unique at Harvard in its exclusive teaching mission. While it does not have a permanent faculty, 52% of instructors are Harvard affiliates, with 19% of those coming from Harvard’s ladder faculty. To date, 86 instructors have been honored for teaching 25 years at DCE, and a few have reached 40 years of teaching. The expansive academic programs offered at DCE draw from the richness of the full FAS curriculum and, in addition to cutting-edge, professionally oriented fields of study, also include bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in the liberal arts with coursework in Humanities, Social Science, and Science disciplines. At the same time, DCE remains alert to market trends and quickly mounts educational offerings that meet those demands. Deep respect for the academic enterprise and for the high standards and rigor of a Harvard education are hallmarks of DCE, regardless of the disciplinary field a student pursues.

Diversity of the student population is a point of pride for the Division. With a remarkable array of programs and a mission to extend Harvard, DCE attracts students from a wide range of backgrounds and with varying educational goals. DCE serves: high school students looking for unique pre-college experiences to prepare them for more advanced study; undergraduates from Harvard, but mostly from other institutions, pursuing summer coursework; and adult, part-time learners who are hungry for new knowledge in the liberal arts, as well as those aiming to acquire additional skills needed to advance professionally. This full sweep of student populations speaks to the rich, dynamic, intellectually ambitious ecosystem that can be found across DCE.

DCE has a long and successful history of supporting and encouraging faculty-driven innovation through a combination of openness to thoughtful experimentation and extensive administrative, technical, pedagogical, and teaching support. This faculty- driven approach is central to DCE’s innovation strategy. DCE provides online and blended teaching expertise, production expertise and capacity, teaching staff support, and extensive technical support for course sites and other instructional technologies, making it possible for Harvard faculty to experiment in the online space and with new teaching and learning models.

Against the backdrop of Harvard’s remarkable resources and reputation, DCE also functions as an important revenue center that provides critically important flexible funds that support the FAS teaching and research mission, while maintaining a clear affordability and access mission and keeping academic rigor at its core. DCE is in a strong financial position and fully economically self‑sustaining with no endowment support. In FY`19, from a revenue base of $140 million dollars, DCE contributed more than $40 million to Harvard and achieved an additional surplus of $8.5 million, bringing reserves to $30 million. These reserves allow for further investment in new learning technology at DCE, as well as funding ongoing innovations, new programs, and growth.

Harvard Extension School For more than a century, Harvard Extension School has made Harvard faculty and teaching accessible to a diverse community of local, national, and now international students. HES offers undergraduate and graduate for-credit courses, certificates, and degrees targeted at adult, part-time learners. HES operates three terms (Fall, January, and Spring), offering open access, on‑campus, online, and hybrid courses to approximately 18,000 students per year in 46 graduate and undergraduate liberal arts and professional fields, with programs offered at competitive prices to communities across the world. Courses available online are approaching 900, and hybrid offerings total over 100. There were 1,207 graduates in May 2019. Courses are priced for access and are typically 75% less than regular Harvard tuitions and similar to U Mass in‑state tuition.

HES has approximately 4,000 degree candidates (1,000 in the Bachelor of Liberal Arts and 3,000 in the Master of Liberal Arts), who matriculate with an earn-your-way-in admissions policy. In addition to degree candidates, HES has about 3,000 graduate students who pursue four-to-five course professional certificates each year that stack into the graduate degree.

Harvard Summer School Harvard Summer School (HSS), DCE’s fastest-growing unit, offers approximately 550 residential, online, and study abroad courses to nearly 10,000 secondary school, college, and adult learners each summer. HSS offers both open‑enrollment courses and selective admission programs. The new Pre‑College Program, an intensive two‑week, noncredit, residential program, has grown to 1,500 students each summer. The Secondary School Program, a seven-week, two-credit, residential program on Harvard’s campus, remains the flagship offering, serving 1,400 high school learners and also engaging 3,500 college students (most from outside Harvard) who take courses but are not all in residence. Study abroad programs are offered in 20 to 25 locations each summer serving nearly 600 students and are led by Harvard faculty. The Crimson Academy, a program for Boston youth, mentors 92 students each year. HSS also hosts HES’s summer term, attracting 3,500 HES learners.

Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement The Division also includes the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement with approximately 550 active members who participate in 140 peer‑taught study groups. Membership is bound by place, with all members residing in the local area.

Harvard Professional Development Programs Harvard Professional Development Programs is the newest of DCE’s units and offers 140 short, noncredit courses to almost 4,000 learners annually, designed to develop and strengthen professional skills for middle managers. PDP is growing quickly and is expected to double in size over the next three to five years to meet growing demand.

The Position

The Dean of the Division of Continuing Education reports to the Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Claudine Gay. Dean Gay leads the FAS with a longstanding dedication to academic service and the value of scholarship, a deep devotion to mentorship for both students and faculty, and ambition to advance diversity, inclusion, and belonging for all constituencies at the FAS.

The Dean of the Division of Continuing Education serves as the Chief Academic and Administrative Officer for all aspects of continuing education in the FAS, including the Extension School, the Summer School, the Harvard Institute for Learning in Retirement, and the Harvard Professional Development Programs. The Dean is responsible for shaping DCE’s open and comprehensive academic curriculum, with courses and programs to meet the interests and needs of Harvard’s employees, students, and a diverse public beyond Harvard’s gates. He or she will be responsible for the strategic direction and management of all DCE offerings and will provide significant thought leadership in Harvard’s efforts in online learning, distance education, and the productive use of technology in pedagogical innovation. The Dean oversees a total staff of approximately 300 in areas including undergraduate degree programs, master’s degree programs, Registrar, Academic Services, and Academic Administration.

Opportunities and Challenges With passion for serving students at every stage of learning and with deep commitment to fulfilling and promoting both the access and academic rigor aspects of the Division’s mission, the next dean will embrace the following opportunities and challenges:

A deeper integration of the Division into the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Reporting directly to the FAS Dean, and working closely with the FAS senior leadership and the FAS Standing Committee on Continuing Education, the new dean will endeavor to extend the ability of the FAS to provide access to a Harvard education to a diverse array of students who might not otherwise benefit, as well as advance faculty-driven pedagogical innovation. Alignment with FAS priorities and faculty governance is key to success. DCE is an important site at Harvard at which new forms of pedagogy are developed and experimentation is encouraged. The dean will be expected to build strong relationships with FAS leadership and faculty to support and encourage their use of DCE classrooms as laboratories to test some of their most innovative ideas around teaching and learning, to perfect new approaches, and to bring them back to other parts of FAS.

Advancing assessment methods and continuing to improve the quality of academic offerings. An important component of pedagogical innovation at DCE will be the expansion of assessment and evaluation tools to continuously improve teaching and learning outcomes. DCE has been growing and expanding its Digital Teaching and Learning unit with a focus on implementing learning engineering to allow for increased measurement, improved analytics, and continuous quality improvement of all DCE offerings. The new dean will be an important partner and leader in University efforts to advance improvements in teaching and learning, and will be expected to build productive cross-institutional relationships to identify opportunities for collaboration to advance these goals.

Growing market awareness with adult learners as DCE establishes its value proposition across digital mediums. Owing to Harvard’s global reputation for academic excellence, DCE is fortunate to have a loyal following of students who come to DCE in pursuit of a rigorous education. However, because DCE’s student population is non-traditional, and focused primarily on adult, part-time learners, enrollments are countercyclical to the job market and experience a market-based flattening of growth (lower enrollment due to positive job growth/employment rates). The Division will need to grow market awareness and marketing effectiveness to compensate for these fluctuations. To stay the same size, DCE needs to attract 20,000 new students each year across its programs. The expansion of marketing and PR activities will be necessary and the new dean will need to engage thoughtfully with how to position DCE’s offerings in the market.

Strategic alignment of credit and noncredit programs. DCE expects that growth will be driven more by noncredit than credit offerings over the next five years. DCE is experimenting in the space connecting credit and noncredit and is introducing new noncredit offerings such as new types of online and hybrid PDPs, as well as new non- degree offerings built from the graduate certificate model. The new dean will provide vision and leadership in expanding offerings, and will pursue this work in close consultation with the FAS dean and FAS Standing Committee on Continuing Education.

Advancement in information systems and student support. DCE is implementing a new CRM-based strategic information system that is flexible, student-centric, and enables superior student advising and support. This updated system will replace a 26-year old Banner system. DCE is about half of the way through this $10 million capital cost, seven- year project. As of fall 2019, two-thirds of DCE staff do their daily work through a Salesforce interface with CRM support tools. The new dean will be expected to advance this work to completion and will be knowledgeable and engaged with changing technology needs and opportunities to drive innovation and elevate pedagogy and student support.

Collaboration across the University on a strategic approach to continuing education at Harvard. Because of Harvard’s decentralized nature, each school operates with significant independence. DCE is at the forefront of continuing education at the University, but other schools – Harvard Business School, the Graduate School of Education, Harvard Law School, and others – play significant roles in the continuing education space as well. Overlaying the work of individual schools is the University’s ambition for a Harvard-wide strategy in this space. The new dean of DCE will play a lead role in supporting the overall University strategy, while actively advocating for the priorities of the FAS and exercising autonomy in continuing to build and expand innovative programming that benefits FAS in the significant ways outlined above.

Preferred Qualifications

The next Dean of the Division of Continuing Education must be a highly engaged, visible, and collaborative leader with a deep understanding of the evolving challenges facing higher education and continuing education in the region, the nation, and the world. The next dean will show confidence, courage, and conviction in leading the Division and will be energized by the unique possibilities for leadership and innovation afforded through Harvard’s outstanding reputation and resources. The next dean will possess many of the following qualities and qualifications:

• An innovation mindset, an entrepreneurial outlook, and the ability to conceive of and implement an exciting vision, in collaboration with others; • Decisive, objective decision making that moves processes forward in an environment open to change and innovation, as well as sensitivity and ability to productively engage with the faculty governance processes; • Ability to partner effectively with FAS leadership to seek their counsel and ensure open, timely communication; • A collaborative orientation and an openness to building and sustaining synergies and win-win partnerships within a university setting; • Experience conceiving academically rigorous and timely programs for rapidly evolving disciplines, as well as for liberal arts fields that have been the hallmark of a Harvard education for nearly 400 years; • Deep interest in engaging with diverse constituencies, including faculty, staff, students, and alumni; • A commitment to technology as a tool to bring about innovation and to elevate pedagogy; • A genuine regard for and in-depth knowledge of online learning as a pedagogy with high value and integrity; • A sophisticated understanding of marketing and an ability to engage in in-depth, strategic dialogue about marketing and branding; • Strong administrative, management, and leadership skills and an ability to build mutual trust and inspire leadership in others; • Fiscal and budgetary acumen; • Cultural sensitivity and a strong personal commitment to diversity, and fostering a culture of inclusion and belonging.

The successful candidate will possess advanced academic and professional credentials (terminal degree preferred), and a minimum of fifteen years of substantial professional experience. Experience and passion around meeting the unique learning needs of DCE’s diverse student populations is required. Please send all nominations and applications electronically and in confidence to:

Ruth Shoemaker Wood, Partner Holly Jackson, Senior Associate Storbeck Search & Associates [email protected]

For more information, please visit Harvard Division of Continuing Education home page at https://www.dce.harvard.edu/.

We are an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions, or any other characteristic protected by law.