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Dean, College of Arts, Media, & Design
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Position Number: 5965066
Location: Boston, MA
Position Type: Deans - Fine and Applied Arts

Dean, College of Arts, Media, & Design

About the Opportunity

Northeastern University seeks a leader of vision, accomplishment, creative and intellectual breadth, and entrepreneurial capacity to serve as the next Dean of the College of Arts, Media and Design (CAMD).

With its six academic schools and departments and multiple research centers and labs, CAMD is a vibrant community of creators, educators, innovators, and researchers dedicated to expanding human potential. CAMD's approach is to integrate human experience with cutting-edge advancements in technology, data, and emerging media to innovate creative industries, inform and develop new kinds of scholarship, art, and practice, and solve the challenges of the future.

Reporting to the university's Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, the dean will play a leadership role in activating the college's presence and engagement across Northeastern's global network of campuses. The dean will advance the distinctiveness, reputation, and impact of the college and the university and will be responsible for:

Guiding the college's academic direction and integrity
Overseeing the recruitment and development of faculty and staff employees and supporting them in their work
Continuing the college's innovation in curriculum, pedagogy, and programs
Generating resources to advance its mission
Fostering a sense of belonging within and beyond the college
Directing its fiscal and operational activities

CAMD leverages Northeastern's distinctive strengths, attributes, and energy. The university's unique value proposition is grounded in several key tenets: an experiential education that prepares graduates to thrive in a technology-driven world; a global network of campuses and partners for students and faculty to leverage for learning and research; a deep investment in lifelong and experiential learning; pedagogical innovation; and a highly collaborative, partner-fueled research enterprise focused on high-impact solutions.

Northeastern has experienced unprecedented growth over the last 20 years. Annual external research funding has increased dramatically fueled by its highly collaborative, interdisciplinary institutes and centers and the hiring of more than 1,000 tenured and tenure-track faculty. Northeastern's experiential model, with its signature co-op program, has expanded to include a vast array of real-world projects and experiences that attract top students at all stages of learning from around the world.

Over the past decade, Northeastern has also established 13 campuses across North America and in the U.K. that offer myriad opportunities in undergraduate and graduate learning, research, and entrepreneurship. This network of campuses offers faculty and students an ever-increasing set of opportunities to learn and discover in new contexts, enriching education and maximizing their ability to make an impact.

College of Arts, Media and Design

The College of Arts, Media and Design has established itself as a vibrant community of creators, communicators, designers, and scholars working together to harness data and emerging technologies to advance human potential and solve the challenges of the future. Housed in a remarkably innovative university, CAMD is well placed to advance the leading edge in how creative endeavors and emerging technologies such as AI inter-relate.

The CAMD community articulates a vision in which "the fields of design, communication, media and the arts are crucial to culture, society, and human experience. We empower the next generation of students, researchers and creative practitioners to create the future by sparking their innovation, creativity, curiosity, and entrepreneurship."

The college's six schools and departments - architecture, art + design, communication studies, journalism, music, and theatre - house a range of interdisciplinary scholars and practitioners with global perspectives and a shared commitment to fostering a vibrant and engaged academic community in which all members feel a sense of belonging.

In its education, research, creative, and community impact, CAMD's faculty aim to "[transform] the academic and research landscape of our disciplines through interdisciplinary collaborations, based on foundational pillars that evolve as we grow." The four pillars are:

Design for Experience
Communication for the Future
Creativity for Innovation
Technology and New Media

CAMD by the Numbers

Undergraduate enrollment

Fall 2024, 1,637 students
1,193 additional non-CAMD undergraduates pursuing combined majors with CAMD
+13% increase in enrollment in the last 5 years
126% growth in CAMD combined major enrollment within the past 5 years

Undergraduate programs and majors

24 undergrad STEM programs
71 combined UG majors
+78% increase in combined majors in the last 5 years

Undergraduate outcomes

96% of CAMD bachelor's graduates are employed or in grad school within 1 year

Masters' enrollment

8 STEM master's degrees
Fall 2024, 345 students
+ 38% increase in enrollment in the last 5 years

PhD enrollment

Fall 2021, 2 students
Fall 2022, 18 students
Fall 2023, 34 students
Fall 2024, 54 students

Faculty and staff

+44% increase in FT CAMD faculty, from 156 in fall 2019 to 224 in fall 2024
+77% increase in CAMD staff, from 56 in 2019 to 99 in 2024
36 tenured/tenure-track faculty appointments since AY 2021

Research

$6.5M in external research funding earned by the college, FY24
+1,000% increase in external research funding in the last 10 years

Succeeding Elizabeth Hudson, who is stepping down after a decade of success building CAMD's faculty and establishing a respected set of academic and administrative leaders across the college, the new dean has the opportunity to make a singular and lasting impact on a diverse range of creative fields and on the students who want to lead those fields. The new dean will be uniquely equipped to do this by advancing and building upon the distinctive tenets of a Northeastern education: experiential learning, global opportunities, and cross-disciplinary work across colleges and STEM disciplines (including computer science, engineering, and science).

The Role

Building on the decade-plus of work that has created CAMD as it is today, the new dean has the opportunity to extend its reach and engagement more fully across Northeastern's network of campuses in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. In leading the college forward, the Dean of CAMD will embrace a core set of responsibilities and expectations; these include:

Aligning the college's goals, research, faculty hiring, and programming to support the university's Academic Plan
Championing the college's role in the education, research, and service missions of the university and advocating for the resources and recognition that are commensurate with that role
Working with the college's leadership and other academic deans to enhance existing academic programs; introduce innovative, scalable, and cross-cutting new programs; and develop processes for review of existing programs
With support from university advancement staff, participating in the cultivation and stewardship of donors to increase college resources
Strengthening and expanding CAMD's engagement with alumni, parents, donors, and other external partners to support the college's programs, growth, and initiatives
Balancing the role the college plays in Northeastern's drive to innovate and its headline initiatives with attention to effective academic and administrative operations, faculty recruitment and development, and student support
Expanding the college's presence in Northeastern's global university system, within which Northeastern's comprehensive campuses in Oakland, California; London, and - soon - Northeastern's New York City location following a merger with Marymount Manhattan College - present immediate and compelling opportunities relevant to the fields CAMD represents
Advancing the college's and the university's efforts in promoting belonging and fostering an inclusive culture within CAMD
Strengthening the college's role as the center of and convener for its disciplines at the university and leveraging that role to promote and integrate arts, media, design, and creative practices, sensibilities, and technologies across the university - for example, by fostering further growth in innovative combined-major and interdisciplinary degree programs that bridge Northeastern's other schools and colleges
Increasing the creative, research, and scholarly activity with the college including in its established, highly regarded community-engaged programs
Continuing the development of the dean's office to provide efficient support for the college's departments, schools, faculty, students, and unit-level staff
Supporting the development of CAMD's department chairs and school directors to provide sustained, empathetic, and visionary leadership
Aligning the structure and resources of the college to meet current and future student, program, and research demands

Embracing the rapidly evolving opportunity-set that Northeastern creates and contributing to its uniquely entrepreneurial culture, the dean will in all endeavors provide responsible, ethical, empathetic, and empowering leadership to this diverse and dynamic academic community.

Qualifications

Northeastern University seeks a dean who possesses unquestioned integrity and exemplary interpersonal and communication skills, a leader with the ability to inspire and align constituents and to leverage the college's and the university's strengths. The dean will be a tireless and resourceful champion for the college and for the fields of arts, media, and design as well as a committed teacher-scholar and/or practitioner who values and supports faculty development and appreciates the full range of methods of inquiry, forms of research, and approaches to pedagogy represented in the college.

The ideal candidate will be a passionate advocate for the virtues of education, research, and practice in media, design, and the arts in the twenty-first century who can imagine their reinvention in the dynamic, trans-disciplinary, entrepreneurial, and globalizing environment of a university committed to innovation and impact. They will be deeply supportive of faculty research and creativity and will promote collaboration across boundaries. This candidate will understand how to position CAMD to contribute to and derive value from Northeastern's mission: "to solve the world's hardest problems and to prepare students for lives of accomplishment." And, crucially, they will have the strategic capacity, collaboration and communication skills, and ability to execute initiatives necessary to succeed in Northeastern's fluid, fast-paced, innovative, and results-driven environment.

Candidates must possess a demonstrated commitment to initiatives that promote a sense of belonging and must show strong evidence of visionary leadership, innovative and entrepreneurial action, administrative and fundraising acumen, and the ability to foster an environment of growth, intellectual development for students, faculty, and staff, collegiality, and respect. Candidates should demonstrate the ability to work effectively within Northeastern's shared-governance practices on the basis of a management style that builds confidence, promotes teamwork, enhances creativity and collaboration, and builds consensus.

Qualified candidates will have an earned doctorate or equivalent terminal degree in their academic field and a distinguished record of accomplishment as a scholar, educator, creator, and/or practitioner appropriate for appointment as a tenured full professor at Northeastern University in one of the academic departments or schools of the college.

Appointment Terms

The dean reports to the Provost for a renewable five-year term. As dean, they will be in a 12-month, 100% administrative role. The dean will be a tenured full professor in a department or school within CAMD (with possible secondary and/or courtesy appointments elsewhere at Northeastern) and will move into a regular 9-month faculty position at the end of their service as dean. CAMD's dean may be based at a Northeastern campus in Boston, New York City, London, or Oakland, California while investing appropriate time in building relationships and camaraderie among colleagues, university leaders, and staff in Boston.

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

Trajectory

Founded in Boston in 1898, Northeastern is renowned for its experiential learning model, high-impact research, deep partnerships, and worldwide reach. From day one, the university has pursued innovative ways of teaching and research that place a premium on experience and engagement with the world. Today, its signature approach spans the world, empowering not only students, but faculty, alumni, partners, and innovators to explore ideas, solve problems, and scale impact.

Its global university provides its community and academic, government, and industry partners with unique opportunities to think locally and act globally. It includes 13 campuses across the U.S., U.K., and Canada, 320,000-plus alumni, and more than 3,800 employer partners worldwide, serving as a platform for scaling ideas, talent, and solutions.

The university's residential campuses for undergraduate and graduate education and research are located in Boston, London, and Oakland, California. Its research- and graduate-focused campuses are in the Massachusetts communities of Burlington and Nahant; Arlington, Virginia; Charlotte, North Carolina; Miami, Florida; Portland, Maine; Seattle, Washington; Silicon Valley, California; Toronto; and Vancouver.

Northeastern's personalized, experiential undergraduate and graduate programs lead to degrees through the doctorate in 10 colleges and schools across its campuses, each led by a dean reporting to the university's provost. Learning emphasizes the intersection of data, technology, and human literacies, uniquely preparing graduates for an AI-driven world and the careers of the future.

Its research enterprise, with an R1 Carnegie classification, is solutions-oriented and spans the world. Its faculty scholars and students work in teams that cross not just disciplines but also sectors-aligned around solving today's highly interconnected global challenges and focused on transformative impact for humankind.

Measures of Success

The pace of change and progress has accelerated significantly under the leadership of President Joseph E. Aoun.Northeastern's research profile and external funding levels have risen sharply: External research funding was $296.3 million in 2024, up more than 500% since 2006. In 2015, the university moved into the top tier for research activity when it achieved R1 status under the Carnegie Classification system. The university had an endowment of $1.9 billion as of June 30, 2024 and an FY24 operating budget of $2.3 billion.

Northeastern's faculty totals more than 4,000 (of whom more than 2,000 are full-time) and comprises a diverse and talented group of teachers and scholars. The Academic Plan prioritizes research, personalized experiential learning, and global impact. The chairs, deans, and provost have built a tenure-track faculty aligned with Northeastern's strategic themes, supported by large investments in new campuses, facilities, and startup packages. Faculty productivity and distinction is at the heart of the Northeastern mission and of the university's commitment to grow its academic enterprise. The nontenure-track faculty receive progressive titles for promotion, training on the science of teaching and learning, and direct participation in shared governance. Faculty cite the interdisciplinary and translational intellectual culture of the campus, Northeastern's excellence in foundational disciplinary research, and institutional momentum as key reasons for joining the university community.

Northeastern's distinctive, internationally recognized programs for experiential learning attract an increasingly diverse and academically talented pool of students. The university's signature cooperative education program (co-op) and other experiential programs have enabled Northeastern undergraduate and graduate students to have professional, research, and service opportunities in 151 countries, giving students real-world experience that adds enriching new dimensions to their classroom studies. Northeastern received 105,092 applications for the Fall 2025 entering class, and the mean composite SAT score of Fall 2024 freshmen was 1483. Applications for master's and certificate programs exceeded 71,000 for Fall 2024, up 260% in the last decade. Over the past five years, 97% of Northeastern graduates were employed (full or part-time) or in graduate school within nine months of graduation, and 91% of employed 2022 graduates were doing work related to their major. Roughly 60% of graduates obtain their first job placement at one of their co-op employers.

About the Global Campuses

The university campuses across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. operate as a distributed global network. For example, new programs may be developed and established at one of the network campuses, enhanced locally, and then offered throughout the broader campus system, consistent with local needs and demand. The successful Align computer science master's program-which accelerates people with no prior computer science education or training into a career in computing-is an example of this approach. It was designed, implemented, and revised in Seattle before being offered in Boston and other campuses. The university also encourages and enables students to benefit from pursuing learning and experiential opportunities at more than one campus in the system. Faculty are encouraged to use the campuses to scale their research, and several of the university's research institutes have hubs on multiple campuses. The Academic Plan envisions that all members of the Northeastern community will have a "passport" to the university's global network to maximize their own opportunities and the impact of their work.

Academic Plan

In 2021, the Northeastern community adopted a new strategic plan, Beyond 2025, that builds on previous efforts and sets ambitious goals for Northeastern's coming decade. At the heart of the framework is the central goal of maximizing Northeastern's positive impact in the world by:

Recognizing the complexity of acute and chronic challenges and working across disciplines to address them
Translating excellence in scholarship and learning into measurable impact
Ensuring all students, faculty, and staff have access to the skills and tools they need to take projects from idea to implementation
Preparing globally mobile, culturally agile lifelong learners through experiential learning and a curriculum that emphasizes the intersection of data, tech, and human literacies
Promoting an academic community in which all members share a sense of belonging and fully participate
Providing an unparalleled experience for those who place their trust in Northeastern-students, employers, research partners, families-enabled by seamless technological integration

President Joseph E. Aoun

Joseph E. Aoun, a well-known higher education thought leader and renowned scholar in linguistics, is the seventh President of Northeastern University.

An internationally respected voice on the value of higher education, President Aoun has led the global expansion of Northeastern's signature co-op program, bringing experiential learning opportunities to more than 150 countries. During his tenure, the university has created a global university system spanning 13 campuses across North America and the U.K., increased external research funding sevenfold, and hired more than 1,000 tenured and tenure-track faculty.

He is the author of numerous articles and books, including Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (MIT Press, revised and updated 2024). In it, he expands on his initial blueprint for colleges and universities to meet the challenges and opportunities associated with the transformative effects of artificial intelligence.

President Aoun came to Northeastern from the University of Southern California's College of Letters, Arts & Sciences where he was the inaugural holder of the Anna H. Bing Dean's Chair. He received his Ph.D. in linguistics and philosophy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and advanced degrees from the University of Paris VIII (France) and Saint Joseph University (Beirut, Lebanon). He was named a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor and a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Palmes Academiques by the French government and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a past Chair of the American Council on Education.

Application Instructions

Northeastern University has engaged Opus Partners to assist with this international recruitment. Craig Smith, Senior Partner, and Abigail Maynard, Managing Associate, are leading the search. To seek additional information, nominate qualified candidates, or to apply, please email Abigail Maynard: abigail.maynard@opuspartners.net.

An application should include a CV and cover letter. Letters should highlight relevant experience, explain interest and motivation, and describe an initial vision for leading the College of Arts, Media and Design. Northeastern University values fostering a sense of belonging among students, faculty, and staff and will seek a leader who is committed to promoting a sense of inclusion and belonging in leading CAMD. We encourage candidates to describe initiatives and accomplishments they have led or participated in that have lowered barriers to and increased participation for all and to address how they might advance a sense of belonging as the Dean of the College of Arts, Media and Design. Review of applications will begin February 10, 2025 and will continue until the university concludes the search.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by the law.

Position Type

Leadership

Additional Information

Northeastern University considers factors such as candidate work experience, education and skills when extending an offer.

Northeastern has a comprehensive benefits package for benefit eligible employees. This includes medical, vision, dental, paid time off, tuition assistance, wellness & life, retirement- as well as commuting & transportation. Visit https://hr.northeastern.edu/benefits/ for more information.

Northeastern University is an equal opportunity employer, seeking to recruit and support a broadly diverse community of faculty and staff. Northeastern values and celebrates diversity in all its forms and strives to foster an inclusive culture built on respect that affirms inter-group relations and builds cohesion.

All qualified applicants are encouraged to apply and will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.

To learn more about Northeastern University's commitment and support of diversity and inclusion, please see www.northeastern.edu/diversity.

To apply, visit https://northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/careers/job/Boston-MA-Main-Campus/Dean--College-of-Arts--Media----Design_R131659