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Southern New Hampshire U. President Takes Federal Post

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March 5, 2015

Southern New Hampshire University's president, Paul LeBlanc, has taken a three-month assignment with the U.S. Department of Education. LeBlanc's appointment, which begins next week, will be as a senior adviser to Ted Mitchell, the department's under secretary. He will focus on competency-based education and "developing new accreditation pathways for innovative programs in higher education," the department and Southern New Hampshire said in a joint news release.

LeBlanc's university has been an early adopter of a new form of competency-based education. It was the first to receive approval from the department for a "direct assessment" program, an approach that does not rely on the credit-hour standard.

“I hope to help the department, and all of us, answer the many questions we still have about competency-based education," LeBlanc said in a written statement. "The department’s innovation agenda has the potential to reshape and change higher education and ultimately to better serve students. The opportunity to play even a small part in that effort was irresistible.”

Paul Fain

Paul Fain, Contributing Editor, came to Inside Higher Ed in September 2011, after a six-year stint covering leadership and finance for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Paul has also worked in higher ed P.R., with Widmeyer Communications, but couldn't stay away from reporting. A former staff writer for C-VILLE Weekly, a newspaper in Charlottesville, Va., Paul has written for The New York Times, Washington City Paper and Mother Jones. He's won a few journalism awards, including one for beat reporting from the Education Writers Association and the Dick Schaap Excellence in Sports Journalism Award. Paul got hooked on journalism while working too many hours at The Review, the student newspaper at the University of Delaware, where he earned a degree in political science in 1996. A native of Dayton, Ohio, and a long-suffering fan of the Cincinnati Bengals, Fain plays guitar in a band with more possible names than polished songs.