Dr. Nathaniel Jones III entered his position as Pepperdine’s new associate provost for Academic Administration on Monday.
According to Provost Darryl Tippens, there was a pressing need to fully implement the University’s new Strategic Plan as well as meet the demands of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC), the regional accrediting agency.
The University needed “someone who had both a strong academic background and specific experience in higher education administration, including accreditation, assessment and strategic planning,” Tippens said.
Moving forward with his new job, Jones “will get acquainted with the budgets and the budget managers,” Tippens said. “He will advise us on the best ways to achieve our educational goals in the most efficient way possible.”
After the loss of Dr. Timothy Chester to the University of Georgia last fall, the University has been shorthanded in the Provost’s Office.
“Dr. Jones has just the credentials and experience we were seeking,” Tippens said.
According to Jones, he will be working with the provost, vice provost and the academic deans in strategic resource allocation and planning, as well as helping to translate the University’s new broad strategic plan into specific strategic plans.
The large initiatives of the broad strategic plan are to enhance and advance learning, knowledge and scholarship, develop resources to do the same, build community, respect diversity, promote global understanding and honor God and heritage. With his position’s emphasis on financial issues, enhancing financial stability at the University will also be an important goal, Jones said.
Because Jones is new to the University, he has no current plans for specific strategies connected to the broader strategic plan.
“It would be unwise of me, at this juncture, to come in with a preconceived notion of what I’m going to change, as if I already have a written prescription,” Jones said.
Jones will instead spend the first three to six months in an analytical information-gathering phase to achieve a solid understanding of how the university operates. He will look especially into the way resources and budgets are allocated. After looking to see how everything works, he will focus primarily on areas that stand to gain a new level of efficiency.
“I will be looking for opportunities to enhance efficiency and improve the effectiveness of both administrative and academic work,” Jones said.
As things move from information-gathering to a phase focused on improvement and the attaining of the University’s strategic plan, Jones will also be involved in the careful monitoring and organizational assessment of the effectiveness of the efforts.
In his prior jobs, Jones had significant experience in helping organizations attain greater levels of efficiency.
“I have both public and private education experience, and I am a detail-oriented problem solver committed to helping the university to function better,” Jones said.
Just before coming to Pepperdine, Jones was employed as the assistant dean and chief financial and administrative officer for the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences for the University of California Riverside (UCR). According to Jones, the college had an operating budget in excess of $82 million and had course enrollments of approximately 10,000 students per year.
“As the assistant dean, I was responsible for providing leadership and overseeing financial affairs, budgeting, IT, human resources, research contracts and grants, as well as providing strategic analysis and administrative oversight of particular academic programs,” Jones said.
Before going to UCR, Jones served as the chief financial and administrative officer for the Tucker Foundation at Dartmouth College and as the assistant dean of resources & enrollment management for the College of Education at Northern Arizona University. He has worked in consulting positions as well.
Jones said he wanted to come to Pepperdine because he was looking for a rewarding and challenging professional position that affords him the opportunity to use his talents and skills in support of an institution with a mission and values he believes in.
“Pepperdine is a great university, and I look forward to helping improve its quality as well as improve its financial health and strength,” he said.
