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Editor's note: The following excerpts are from the Chancellor's Search Committee position description of Carolina's next top official.
The position
The chancellor is the executive and administrative head of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, exercising overall authority therein, subject to the direction of the president. The chancellor is responsible for carrying out the policies of the Board of Trustees and of the Board of Governors.
Fundamentally, the responsibilities of the chancellor will include:
* Provide strategic leadership and effectively articulate the mission of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to the people of North Carolina and the nation.
* Support an environment to provide excellent teaching, research and public service by educating students at all levels in an environment of free inquiry and personal responsibility.
* Provide academic and administrative leadership to the University and work with the faculty, staff, students and alumni in pursuing the University's mission.
* Lead and build a complex University.
* Provide the necessary financial resources to accomplish the University's vision.
* Strengthen and expand existing relationships with internal and external constituencies, including alumni, grant-making formulators and other private sources of funding.
* Work effectively and collaboratively with the North Carolina General Assembly, under the direction of the president, and strengthen and expand existing relationships with internal and external constituencies.
The candidate
Leading candidates preferably will have served in major leadership roles in higher education, ideally in an institution comparable in complexity to a research university that includes a major academic health center. Candidates possessing non-traditional backgrounds such as senior executives in the not-for-profit sector, health care, business or related professions must demonstrate an understanding of and enthusiasm for public higher education.
Strategic context
Over the past four years UNC-Chapel Hill has successfully recruited a talented and highly experienced series of new senior administrators including three of the six vice chancellors, one provost, nine of the 13 deans, and several others (directors of admissions and financial aid).
The next chancellor will have immediate opportunities to select a new provost, vice chancellor for finance and administration, and vice provost for graduate education and research, establishing the senior core of a strong administrative leadership team.
Solid foundations have been laid for a billion-dollar-plus development campaign, major upgrades in information technology utilization, a series of initiatives to enhance the intellectual climate of the campus (and in particular to provide a strong model of undergraduate education in a research university), a well-conceived campus physical plan and capital facilities construction program, an improved strategic planning, evaluation and budgeting process, and a program of staged enrollment increases to meet rising demand. UNC-Chapel Hill also has a strongly collaborative decision-making tradition among its administrators, faculty, staff and students.
The new chancellor will thus have an unusually promising opportunity not merely to carry out the normal responsibilities of such a position in a top-ranked public university, but also to lead in shaping and implementing these and other forward-looking initiatives to advance Carolina's status as one of the premier public universities in the United States and the world. The University's stated aspiration is to become the best public university in the United States.
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