The Associated Colleges of the South has named Stephanie Fabritius, Ph.D., as its new president effective July 1, 2019. A distinguished citizen-leader, Dr. Fabritius is a professor of biology and has served as vice president for academic affairs and dean of Centre College for 12 years. She will succeed R. Owen Williams, Ph.D., who has served as the president of the 16-member consortium since 2014.
“Our national search brought the ACS a deep and diverse pool of outstanding leaders in education and beyond,” says Edward Burger, president of Southwestern University and chair of the board of directors of ACS. “Within that talented group of individuals, Dr. Fabritius stood out as a leader who knew and understood all 16 institutional members, saw common threads of potential synergies, and has the energy and talents to move the ACS to new levels of excellence into the future. The Board of Directors is eager and excited to welcome Stephanie to her new leadership role and work with her to enhance higher education.”
As ACS president, Dr. Fabritius will collaborate with a council of academic deans to initiate and support ACS’s ongoing programs of the consortium, including implementing the consortium’s strategic plan and a variety of grant initiatives. During this past academic year, she has been consulting with colleagues at ACE on their new collaborative initiative, ACE Engage, a peer-to-peer online learning platform exclusively for leaders in higher education. “I am deeply humbled to be named as the next president of the Associated Colleges of the South,” she says. “I look forward to working with these 16 outstanding national liberal-arts institutions to further explore ways in which collaboration can lead to even greater impact. My own professional life, both through my work as a faculty member and as a senior administrator, has long been enhanced by the work of the consortium. This makes the opportunity to lead and serve this distinguished consortium especially meaningful.”
As the first woman to serve as dean of Centre College, Dr. Fabritius tirelessly championed undergraduate internships and research opportunities, was integral to the expansion of the college’s Center for Teaching and Learning, co-created the faculty athletic liaison program, and helped shape the Brown Fellows Program, a full-ride plus scholarship program. In addition to her valuable contributions to Centre College, she has served on the board of the American Council of Academic Deans. Prior to joining Centre, she was a professor of biology, the Lillian Nelson Pratt Chair in the Sciences, an associate provost, and the director of the Paideia Program at Southwestern University, where she worked for more than 17 years. In 2002–2003, she was one of 35 professors and academic administrators from across the country named an American Council on Education Fellow for emerging leaders, spending a year at Bowdoin College. A behavioral ecologist specializing in avian research, she earned her Ph.D. in biology from Purdue University and her B.S. from Pepperdine University.