Kenyon appoints new dean of admissions and financial aid
Jennifer Delahunty Britz, a consultant, editorial director, and writer for the higher-education brand management and marketing communications firm The Lawlor Group, has been named the dean of admissions and financial aid at Kenyon. In July, she succeeded M. Beverly Morse, who has been the College's acting admissions dean since John W. Anderson departed Kenyon in July 2002 to become director of college counseling at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.Britz has been with The Lawlor Group, a firm specializing in work with private liberal-arts colleges, since 1989. As a consultant, she has worked with colleges across the country on such initiatives as brand identity and strategies and tactics for enhancing recruitment efforts. Prior to her work with The Lawlor Group, Britz was director of admissions and communications at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University, affiliated institutions in Minnesota.
According to Ronald A. Sharp, the College's former acting president, Britz was the search committee's top candidate because of her wide range of experience and her "wealth of imaginative new ideas."
Britz attended Carleton College and earned a bachelor's degree in history and a masters of fine arts degree in creative nonfiction from the University of Arizona. She has taught writing and literature courses at the University of Arizona and Central Oregon Community College. As the editor of The Lawlor Review, a higher-education marketing journal, Britz collaborates with a team of writers and a production staff. Together, they produce a publication that supports an ongoing dialogue with admissions deans, college presidents, and those interested in the issues facing higher education.
"When I met Jennifer Britz, it became clear to me why the Kenyon community was excited about her," says President S. Georgia Nugent. "Three characteristics about her particularly stand out in my mind: her broad knowledge of the field of admissions, her deep understanding of liberal-arts education, and her creative imagination. Jennifer will be able to build on and extend the great work that the admissions office has accomplished in recent years."
Britz says one of her goals is to make Kenyon more widely known on a national level. "The College occupies a distinctive place in the constellation of American higher education, a place where intellectual rigor, creativity, and community not only coexist but enjoy an unusual kind of symbiosis," says Britz.
The appointment of Britz comes at an auspicious time in the history of admissions at Kenyon. The number of students applying to the College is at an all-time high, while the selectivity rate for the Class of 2007 makes it one of the most competitive classes in Kenyon's history. Britz is the first woman to serve in a permanent capacity in the dean of admissions position, just as Nugent is the first woman to serve as the College's president.
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