Associate Vice President, Strategic Enrollment Operations

Associate Vice President, Strategic Enrollment Operations – Eastern Kentucky University

Full‑time administrator, Richmond Campus, Eastern Kentucky University.

The Associate Vice President for Strategic Enrollment Operations is a hands‑on, execution‑focused leader responsible for directly driving enrollment growth, student persistence, and degree completion across the full student lifecycle. This role is operational by design and is not intended to function as a figurehead or purely strategic advisor. The AVP is expected to actively engage in the design, implementation, and continuous improvement of enrollment, retention, registration, financial aid, and student success operations, using data, financial analysis, and cross‑functional collaboration to deliver measurable outcomes.

Success in this role is defined by results, including enrollment yield, retention and progression, optimized financial aid leveraging, improved student service performance, and operational alignment across enrollment and student success units.

• 30% – Leads and executes university‑wide enrollment and student success operations across undergraduate, transfer, adult, non‑traditional, and corporate education populations. Actively partners with unit leaders to diagnose performance gaps, redesign workflows, and implement solutions that improve recruitment, yield, retention, and completion. (Essential)
• 20% – Directly responsible for financial aid strategy, including tuition discounting, leveraging, and optimization in collaboration with finance and senior leadership. Uses enrollment modeling, elasticity analysis, and ROI assessment to balance access, affordability, and institutional sustainability. (Essential)
• 20% – Analyzes the effectiveness and efficiency of recruitment, financial aid, and student service initiatives using dashboards, KPIs, cohort analysis, and funnel metrics. Initiates corrective action, reallocates resources, and adjusts tactics to ensure performance goals are met. (Essential)
• 15% – Builds, interprets, and presents enrollment, retention, and financial aid analyses to inform institutional decision‑making. Oversees the development of actionable reporting that supports real‑time operational decisions rather than retrospective reporting alone. (Essential)
• 10% – Supervise and develop directors and staff across enrollment functional areas. Leads the Enrollment & Student Success Operations communication strategy and ensures consistent messaging across enrollment and student success units. Actively collaborates with academic leadership, marketing, finance, and student affairs to align execution across the student lifecycle. (Essential)
• 5% – Serves as an advocate for enrollment and student success priorities, represents the division as needed to internal and external stakeholders, and completes special initiatives that advance institutional goals. (Essential)

Education:

Master’s degree in Higher Education Administration, Student Affairs, Counseling, Public Administration, or a related field.

Experience:

Minimum of five (5) years of progressively responsible leadership experience with direct accountability for enrollment outcomes, student success initiatives, and/or financial aid strategy. The ideal candidate is a proven enrollment and student success operator with direct experience managing complex enrollment funnels, retention initiatives, and financial aid strategy. This individual has personally led change initiatives, used data to diagnose performance gaps, and partnered cross‑functionally to execute solutions – not simply set vision.

Sponsorship:
This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship.

Funding Source:
Institutional.

Eastern Kentucky University is an Equal Opportunity employer and educational institution and does not discriminate on the basis of age (40 and over), race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, ethnicity, disability, national origin, veteran status, or genetic information in the admission to, or participation in, any educational program or activity (e.g., athletics, academics and housing) which it conducts or any employment policy or practice.

Offers of employment are contingent upon a satisfactory background check.