About Us

Mission
For more than four decades, Academic Search has offered executive search services to higher education institutions, associations, and related organizations. Academic Search was founded by higher education leaders on the principle that we provide the most value to partner institutions by combining best practices with our deep knowledge and experience. Our mission today is to enhance institutional capacity by providing outstanding executive recruitment services, executive coaching, and transition support, in partnership with our parent organization, the American Academic Leadership Institute.

Word cloud with the following words: Flexible, Professional, Committed, Knowledgeable, Trustworthy, Ethical, Responsive, Experienced

Values
Academic Search’s values proposition is based on providing services that our partner institutions can rely on unequivocally to achieve their recruitment goals and to support their overarching missions. The four pillars of our proposition are:

EXPERTISE

Academic Search brings a deep understanding of college and university processes from specializing in higher education searches for 47 years, and our accomplished consultants have an intimate understanding of what makes a successful executive leader. Our senior consultants are seasoned and thoughtful leaders who have vast professional networks and a combined 1,600 years of higher education service and experience. They bring this expertise directly to our partner institutions through their hands-on involvement in the recruiting, evaluation, and vetting of each candidate pool for every search.

EXCELLENCE

We organize, manage, and inform a search process that is customized to the particular and unique needs of each of our partner institutions. We have designed a professional search model that is thorough and effective. We are diligent in achieving search milestones and deliverables within the approved search schedule, in a manner that promotes a positive impression of the partner institution in the greater higher education community. We offer expert advisement and counsel at each stage of the search, and provide evolving information on best practices, market forces, and other factors that may impact the completion of the search.

REACH

Our active involvement in leadership development programs extends our reach, relationship-building, and recruitment of potential candidates to every search. Academic Search is unmatched in access to and knowledge about both current and rising leaders in higher education. We leverage the extensive networks of our consultants to gain access to a wide, diverse, and ever-expanding group of highly qualified potential candidates and referrals forged from relationships they developed from having previously served in campus leadership roles across the country.

TRUST

We are honest with our partner institutions and candidates; we respect and protect the confidentiality of all candidate and nominee data as well as search committee conversations throughout the search process and in perpetuity. We are reliable and ethical in our commitment to working discreetly with an institution and particularly with the search committee chair and hiring authority.

Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
All of us at Academic Search recommit ourselves to supporting the work of our institutional partners who seek to redress past inequities and to assure that the value and dignity of all are protected and celebrated. To this end, we have come together with other members of the Association of Executive Search and Leadership Consultants (AESC) in signing the AESC Diversity Pledge. There is urgent work to be done, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to examining our own implicit biases and privileges, as well as their impacts. As thought leaders, we are dedicated to making a difference through the vital role we play in serving the cause of higher education. This guiding principle is why we also remain committed to exposing every search to the broadest range of potential candidates through strategic placement of position announcements and direct contact with prospective applicants who represent the entire spectrum of diversity, and have included implicit bias training for search committees whenever possible. In addition, as an organization, we have an internal Steering Committee for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; fund fellowships for leadership development programs for persons from underrepresented groups; and have made diversity a high priority in our recruitment of internal team members.

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American Academic Leadership Institute, The Council of Independent Colleges, American Association of State Colleges and Universities

Work with Leadership Development Organizations
We are committed to assisting in the development of leadership talent. Our consultants work pro-bono with several programs throughout the year, including those of our non-profit parent organization the American Academic Leadership Institute (AALI), Higher Education Resource Services (HERS), the American Council on Education (ACE), the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), and the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC), among other national education associations. Having access to and developing a record of success with these programs not only speaks to our mission as an organization but also uniquely enables us to help institutions of higher education meet their goals and aspirations in finding highly qualified and diverse pools of candidates.

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EXPERTISE

EXCELLENCE

REACH

TRUST