Kim Phipps, the president of Messiah University in Grantham, plans to retire in June 2025 after two decades leading the university, which was a college when she first became president.
Indeed, converting Messiah from a college to a university is one of Phipps’s major achievements as leader of the Christian-based institution, where she worked for 27 years overall.
She is the school’s eighth president and the first woman in the role.
“Her commitment to the integration of educational excellence and Christina faith and service, combined with her distinctive collaborative and student-centric leadership style, have positioned Messiah as a premier institution in the national higher education landscape,” Dr. Craig Sider, chair of Messiah’s board of trustees, said in a statement.
Messiah is planning a national search to find her replacement.
The background: Messiah has about 3,320 undergraduate and graduate students.
Institutions of higher ed are facing tremendous challenges, exemplified by the sudden closure last week of Philadelphia’s University of the Arts.
But Messiah is in good financial shape, according to bond ratings agency S&P Global.
In April, the agency assigned new bonds from the school an investment-grade rating of A- and affirmed an A- rating on previous bonds.
“The rating reflects our assessment of the university’s proactive and experienced management team and consistently solid retention and graduation rates at the undergraduate level,” S&P analyst Vicky Stavropoulos said in a statement.
