President Don Snyder is pleased to announce that UNLV has hired Academic Leadership Associates, LLC, to be the consultant to help us as we move forward on the Path to Tier One. Our vision is to become a Carnegie Research Very High institution. Academic Leadership Associates (ALA) has provided strategic planning and facilitation services to universities, business schools, accounting programs, and other academic units for nearly 20 years. The institutions that ALA has served span public and private, large and small, domestic and international organizations. The team members include:

• Michael Diamond, who served for ten years as the Vice President and Executive Vice Provost at the University of Southern California (USC), with broad responsibility for the academic enterprise and the academic budget. His consulting experience with research universities includes Northeastern University, the University of California, Irvine, and the University of Kentucky.
• Mark Robison, who has served in various leadership positions at Brandeis University and USC. His consulting experiences include a broad range of research universities such as Johns Hopkins University, the University of Oklahoma, and Tulane University.
• Lloyd Armstrong, whose leadership experience includes six years as Dean of the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences at Johns Hopkins University as well as 15 years as Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at USC. Armstrong has also consulted with Northeastern University and Oklahoma State University, as well as a variety of other influential educational consulting firms and organizations.

The team’s background, especially at USC, will be valuable as UNLV moves toward Tier One. USC’s academic reputation and rankings increased dramatically between 1993 and 2005, when Dr. Armstrong and Dr. Diamond led the academic enterprise at the university. Armstrong and Diamond oversaw three strategic planning processes for the university as architects of this transformation, with Dr. Robison joining them in the USC administration in 2002.

Funding for the consultant comes from the President's one-time discretionary funds, and ALA's next step will be to work with President Snyder and Senior Advisor Nancy Rapoport to finalize the Steering Committee and develop an outline and accompanying timeline for their work prior to the start of the fall semester.