Whitman College Hiring for Provost and Dean of Faculty at Walla Walla Full Time

Whitman College, one of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges and a “College that Change Lives,” seeks a collaborative and innovative academic leader to serve as its next Provost and Dean of Faculty (Provost). The Provost will be joining Whitman as the institution emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic in a solid financial position. In 2022, Dr. Sarah R. Bolton, a well-respected scholar and seasoned administrator who took the helm as Whitman’s President, leads an expert, collaborative, and inclusive President’s Cabinet who are ready to build on Whitman’s strong foundation. With a new strategic plan, world-class faculty, a college-wide interest in innovation, and an ambitious fundraising campaign soon underway, the Provost will be joining the Whitman community at an exciting inflection point in its history.

Founded in 1882, Whitman College is a private, independent, co-educational, non-sectarian liberal arts undergraduate college with approximately 1,500 students. The College is committed to its liberal arts mission and expanding socio-economic, racial, ethnic, and geographical diversity to meet the needs of a rapidly changing student population. At Whitman, students develop leadership skills, personal confidence, and intellectual creativity in an environment that emphasizes community, cooperation, and inclusive excellence. They are taught by expert faculty who are equally committed to their teaching and their research as they believe that each richly informs the other. The College is ranked #48 among national liberal arts colleges by U.S. News & World Report and has an endowment of $701 million as of March 31, 2023, with decades of continuous balanced budgets and no deferred maintenance for its facilities. Whitman is located in the beautiful foothills of the Blue Mountains, where the city of Walla Walla is home to about 34,000 people, three institutions of higher education (Whitman College, Walla Walla University, and Walla Walla Community College), and a booming wine industry.

With strategic priorities recently approved by the Board, the Whitman community is now transitioning to act on those priorities. The next Provost will have the opportunity to work closely with the President’s Cabinet, a dedicated and strong team in the Office of the Provost and Dean of Faculty, and accomplished faculty, to help implement these new goals and initiatives. The Provost will focus on academic programming and the co-curricular experience with a lens that foregrounds equity, diversity, and inclusion; and they will have the opportunity to leverage a Whitman community that is eager to put the students and their success at the heart of everything they do. By overseeing a robust purview of units that span academic affairs and academic success initiatives, the Provost will work collaboratively with teams across the campus to make Whitman a first-choice institution in an ever-changing higher education landscape.

The Provost will be expected to address the following key opportunities and challenges: