Chief Academic Officer

Job Ref:

Location:

ICC - Adelphi, MD

Category:

Advising and Enrollment

Type:

Full time

Chief Academic Officer & Vice President, Global Academic Learning Enterprise

Office of the Chief Learner Experience & Success Officer

Exempt, Regular, Full-Time

University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) seeks an innovative, results-oriented servant leader as Chief Academic Officer and Vice President of Global Academic Learning Enterprise. Our Global Academic Learning Enterprise (GALE) includes many of the functions that traditional models refer to as Academic Affairs. UMGC is intentionally building an academic enterprise defined by impact rather than tradition. The Chief Academic Officer (CAO) will play a defining role in shaping the next generation of online and global public higher education.

Reporting to the Chief Learner Experience & Success Officer (CLESO), the CAO will lead UMGC's academic enterprise as a globally scaled, learner-centric, data-driven, skills-based, and AI-powered organization. The CAO is responsible for ensuring academic quality and public trust while deliberately moving the institution beyond legacy academic structures, titles, and workflows that no longer serve modern learners ensuring that UMGC's degrees, credentials, and learning pathways are coherent, credible, relevant, and outcomes-driven across a global, adult-serving learner population. The CAO is responsible for academic product strategy, portfolio stewardship, faculty excellence, and academic legitimacy. This leader will collaborate with others to reimagine academic models adapting to the continuously changing landscape in post-secondary education with the ability to see experiences through the eyes of the learner.

UMGC operates through a purpose-built, matrixed operating model that aligns academic authority, learner experience strategy and learning product execution around a shared commitment to student success. In this model, the CAO provides leadership for the academic compass - articulating what learning must mean, what outcomes credentials represent, and what standards define quality - while Learning Product Development translates that intent into cohesive, learner-centered experiences and scalable learning products. The CAO must exhibit a commitment to academic rigor and learner success. This model allows UMGC to pair the credibility of a mature academic institution with the agility, speed, and continuous improvement of a modern, student-centered, product-led organization. The CAO will be a collaborative, high-EQ leader who is comfortable leading through complexity and change with a bias toward execution and measurable impact.

This leader will view academic work through a "Jobs-to-Be-Done" lens—organizing roles, responsibilities, and workflows around what must be accomplished to enable learner success, rather than around traditional academic or faculty titles. The CAO will work collaboratively and as an equal partner with other student-facing leaders across the university, sharing accountability for learner access, engagement, persistence, completion, and post-completion success.

The CAO leads the three Schools (Cybersecurity & Information Technology; Business; and Integrative & Professional Studies) and academic leadership not as independent academic silos, but as distinct academic product portfolios aligned to UMGC's learner segments, workforce needs, and strategic priorities. Each School, led by a Portfolio Vice President/Dean is accountable for the academic health, relevance, and performance of its portfolio. The CAO will govern enterprise academic performance indicators used consistently across portfolios to inform investment, evolution, and sunsetting decisions considering the product holistically using clear indicators of quality, outcomes, relevance, sustainability, and learner value.

Faculty excellence is central to this role. The CAO will serve as the University's chief steward of faculty quality, engagement, and academic leadership embracing changes to serve learners best and thus will lead the evolution of faculty roles, workload models, and expectations to align with centrally designed, technology-enabled learning systems while preserving academic judgment, rigor, and disciplinary integrity. Faculty are positioned as essential academic partners bringing disciplinary expertise, teaching excellence, and academic judgment within an operating model that shares matrixed accountability for the learning experience, leveraging the expertise of closer partners to improve learner outcomes.

The CAO will lead an academic organization that sees itself as the next generation of online and global education serving learners through various modalities to meet the individual needs of a diverse student population—one that continuously adapts to learner needs, workforce demands, technological change, and societal expectations. The CAO will ensure academic rigor and integrity remain non-negotiable, and lead academics as an integrated, outcomes-driven system operating in true partnership with other learner-facing functions.

The CAO is a bold, visionary, and humble leader who believes deeply in UMGC's mission to transform lives through access to high-quality education. This leader brings the courage to challenge legacy models, the discipline to anchor decisions in evidence and outcomes, and the humility to lead through partnership in a highly matrixed environment. The CAO plays a critical role in advancing UMGC's Innovation Forward agenda and Strategic Plan, ensuring academic strategy evolves in step with institutional priorities, emerging technologies, and the changing needs of adult learners and employers.

Through this role, the CAO ensures UMGC's academic enterprise remains trusted, differentiated, and future-ready, combining rigor with relevance, scale with quality, and innovation with integrity. The successful candidate will bring an incessant passion and experience in challenging the status quo, leading change in education, and embracing new technologies in order to improve learner experiences.

Relocation to the Maryland / DC /Northern Virginia metro area is required. Upon relocation, this position operates in a hybrid model with three (3) days per week on-site.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

Academic Product Strategy, Portfolio Stewardship and Enterprise Transformation

• Own and execute UMGC's academic product strategy and portfolio, including undergraduate, graduate, credential, and non-degree offerings that prioritize learner outcomes, skills attainment and workforce relevance in alignment with UMGC's strategic plan and Innovation Forward goals
• Lead the Schools as academic product portfolios, ensuring each portfolio has clear academic intent, outcomes, differentiation, and sustainability
• Partner with other senior level colleagues to drive key institutional metrics including student success, satisfaction, persistence, retention and graduation
• Lead the evolution toward coherent, stackable learning pathways that support lifelong learning
• Align academic offerings with labor-market data, employer needs, and industry-validated skills
• Establish decision frameworks for program approval, evolution, prioritization, investment, and sunsetting, grounded in academic quality, learner outcomes, workforce relevance, and mission alignment
• Hold accountability for academic product health at the portfolio level, partnering with the Center Institutional Effectiveness, Marketing, Learner Lifecycle Success, Global Military Operations, Global Workforce Partnerships, Experience Strategy & Design, Product Management, and Analytics teams to monitor quality, outcomes, relevance, and long-term viability
• Establish a curriculum performance framework using analytics and assessment to drive improvement Leadership of Schools
• Lead and develop Portfolio VPs/Deans as academic portfolio leaders, accountable for the performance, relevance, and integrity of their respective product portfolios
• Ensure clarity of roles, decision rights, and accountability across the academic organization within a matrixed operating model
• Enable cross-portfolio alignment while preserving appropriate disciplinary depth, innovation, and differentiation
• Foster a culture of evidence-based decision-making, continuous improvement, and shared ownership of learner outcomes

Academic Quality, Integrity & Accreditation

• Serve as UMGC's chief steward of academic quality, rigor, and integrity across all learning models and modalities
• Define and govern the University's academic quality framework, including learning outcomes, assessment expectations, curricular standards, and academic policies
• Serve as executive lead for institutional and specialized accreditation, compliance, academic reporting, and regulatory alignment with regional, professional, and governmental bodies
• Maintain rigorous compliance with accreditation standards and regulatory requirements, upholding transparency, integrity, and public trust while also appropriately continuing to advocate in the best interest of our learners
• Provide executive oversight to ensure positioning of the Registrar as a strategic enabler of learner mobility and progression, ensuring that academic policies, credit practices, and supporting systems minimize friction and accelerate learner advancement
• Leads registrar operations that effectively support