Biography

Susan Resneck Pierce is President of SRP CONSULTING, LLC and President Emerita of the University of Puget Sound where she served from 1992-2003.  Under her leadership, Puget Sound entered the ranks of the national liberal arts colleges. The endowment grew from $68 million to $213 million (in 2003 dollars). The college completed $85 million of new construction and major renovations. SAT scores increased from 1067 to 1253, and applications for 650 freshmen places grew to 4400 annually. 

Susan Pierce also served as Vice President for Academic Affairs at Lewis & Clark College, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tulsa, Assistant Director of Education Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities and Visiting Associate Professor at Princeton. She also served for a year as President of the Boca Raton Regional Hospital Foundation and Vice President for the Hospital. 

Today, as President of SRP CONSULTING, Susan Pierce has advised more than 115 colleges and universities and other non-profit organizations on such matters as effective board and presidential performance, faculty governance, shared governance, board development, strategic planning and mergers. She coaches presidents, advises board chairs, conducts 360 presidential evaluations and facilitates focused retreats for boards, president’s cabinets and faculty.  

Dr. Pierce writes and speaks extensively about higher education. Jossey-Bass published and Inside Higher Ed sponsored her last two books: Governance Reconsidered: How Boards, Presidents, Administrators and Faculty Can Help Their Colleges Thrive (2014) and On Being Presidential: A Guide for College and University Leaders, (2012). She is also the author of The Moral of the Story: Literature, Values and American Higher Education (Columbia University’s Teacher’s College Press, 1982) and numerous essays about American literature, and she is co-editor of a book on Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (The Modern Language Association, 1989). 

Boards of Trustees often use her books and essays. (A more detailed list of her publications can be found on her website at: https://srpconsulting.com/published-author-portfolio/). 

Susan Pierce has presented at meetings of the National Association of Colleges and Universities Governing Boards, the American Council on Education, the Council of Independent Colleges and the National Association for Student Affairs Administrators. She has also spoken at the SUNY Executive Leadership Academy and was the keynote speaker for the SUNY Voices Second Annual Conference on Shared Governance. She has played leadership roles in many higher education organizations, including serving on the Association of Governing Boards Council of Presidents, the Board of the American Association of Colleges and Universities and the Annapolis Group Executive Committee. She has also served of counsel for AGB Search and Witt/Kieffer.

She has been active in many civic, cultural and professional organizations, including serving on the boards of the Seattle Symphony, Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, the Tulsa Chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, and Tulsa Opera. She co-founded the Access to College program at the University of Puget Sound in collaboration with the Tacoma Public Schools and for four years served on the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Task Force on College Drinking. She now lives in Boca Raton, FL where she served as a founding board member of the Festival of the Arts Boca and creator of its Authors and Ideas program. She has for the past eight years served on the Board of the Boca Museum of Art where she has chaired the Nominating Committee and more recently the Committee on the Future of the Art School.

Dr. Pierce received her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College, her M.A. degree in from the University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, all in English. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

In addition to providing a more detailed list of her publications and presentations, her website, www.srpconsulting.com, lists many of her recent clients and posts testimonials from a number of them.