Vice President for Enrollment Management
The Bentonville Institute of Technology seeks a creative, entrepreneurial, and collaborative founding Vice President for Enrollment Management (VPEM) to design and build the institution's enrollment enterprise from the ground up.
As a founding executive, the VPEM will serve as a key member of the executive team. Launching its first undergraduate cohort in Fall 2029, the Bentonville Institute of Technology (BIT), located in Bentonville, Arkansas, is a new private, nonprofit institution offering an intensive three-year, project-based STEM-focused degree across five eight-week terms per year, with concentrations in Mobility, Automation & Robotics, Health Systems, and Energy Systems.
This opportunity is grounded in an ambitious institutional vision to create a new model of post-secondary education—one that expands opportunity, strengthens the economy of Northwest Arkansas, and offers a nationally significant approach to 21st-century higher education. The Institute will combine rigorous STEM learning with business, entrepreneurship, design, communication, and human context to prepare students to become adaptable builders, innovators, and leaders.
The Institute’s flexible, stackable academic model will include a bachelor’s degree and certificate programs in fields such as computing and artificial intelligence, entrepreneurship and technology management, automation and robotics, logistics, health, and energy systems. Students will learn by building — moving between classrooms, studios, laboratories, industry-sponsored projects, and a signature environment for prototyping, experimentation, and applied problem-solving. Strong partnerships with businesses, schools, healthcare organizations, entrepreneurs, and civic and philanthropic leaders will keep the curriculum relevant while creating meaningful pathways for experiential learning, employment, and lifelong education.
Reporting to Inaugural President David Mazyck, Ph.D., and as a member of the executive leadership team, the Vice President for Enrollment Management will help shape the university's long-term growth strategy by defining the founding student profile, developing a distinctive enrollment philosophy, and building the student pipeline that supports both the fall 2029 launch and the institution's long-term success. This role extends well beyond admissions operations. The VPEM will serve as one of the principal architects of BIT's approach to attracting, selecting, and enrolling students.
For the founding VPEM, the mandate is both strategic and deeply consequential: to translate this distinctive mission into an enrollment promise that resonates with students and families, build access and affordability into the institution’s growth model, and create durable pipelines across Arkansas and beyond. The successful candidate will have the rare opportunity to shape not only who enrolls at the Institute, but also how a new university earns trust, demonstrates value, and develops a student body capable of advancing industries, communities, and the future of higher education.
Operating with the urgency, ambiguity, and pace of a start-up, the VPEM will build organizational capacity while balancing immediate needs with long-term strategy for admissions, financial aid, and enrollment operations functions that carry the institution from its founding class through to a steady-state enrollment of approximately 1,500 undergraduates and 500 certificate learners. In the early years, the successful candidate will take a highly visible, hands-on approach to outreach, relationship-building, and student recruitment while establishing the systems, processes, and market presence necessary for sustained growth. Team expansion will be driven by measurable enrollment success, allowing the leader to shape both the strategy and the organization as the institution evolves.
BIT is an AI-native institution — AI is woven into how the Institute teaches, operates, and serves students. This role is expected to pioneer AI-enabled recruitment, communication, and enrollment operations, and to model fluent, responsible use of AI in daily work. The VPEM will bring a bold, entrepreneurial, and creative mindset to define how artificial intelligence transforms the prospective student experience — from personalized engagement and admissions workflows to predictive enrollment analytics and data-informed decision-making — while ensuring that all AI applications remain ethical, transparent, and student-centered.
All applications, nominations, and inquiries are invited. Applications should include, as separate documents, a CV or resume and a letter of interest addressing the themes in the leadership profile available at https://wittkieffer.com/positions/a1WUn000002MobJMAS.
WittKieffer is assisting Bentonville Institute of Technology in this search. Credential review will begin immediately, and the position will remain open until an appointment is made.
Application materials should be submitted using WittKieffer’s candidate portal available at https://apptrkr.com/9944703.
Nominations and inquiries can be directed to:
Shelley Arakawa, J.D., Ethan Robles, and Suzanne Teer
Bentonville Institute of Technology is an equal opportunity employer committed to building and maintaining a workplace that is free of discrimination and harassment of any kind. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, veteran status, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate.
All offers of employment are contingent on successful completion (where permitted by state law) of a confidentiality agreement and background check. In addition, the employee must provide proper identification verifying eligibility to work in the United States.
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