Assistant Vice President, Institutional Excellence & Continuous Improvement

The American College of Financial Services; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

The American College of Financial Services seeks an Assistant Vice President of Institutional Excellence & Continuous Improvement to build systems, disciplines, and culture that turn insight into action. The role connects assessment, accreditation, performance, analytics, and change management to answer critical questions about effectiveness and impact.

The AVP will partner with executive and academic leadership to embed practices that improve operations, measure outcomes, and advance strategic

Qualifications

• Master's degree required or equivalent in a relevant field.
• 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 MSCHE.

Responsibilities

• Lead institutional excellence assessment across non-academic functions.
• Develop dashboards, scorecards, and performance measures to inform leadership.
• Coordinate evidence and documentation for accreditation readiness and continuous improvement.
• Lead change management and organizational readiness initiatives across departments.

Education

Master's degree in Higher Education Administration, Educational Leadership, Business Administration, Data Analytics, Public Administration, Organizational Development, or a related field

Job description

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
• 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:

• Organizational effectiveness
• Accountability
• Operational excellence

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
• 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
• 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
• 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 initiativesExperience 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