SNHU President Wins Award

Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) President Paul LeBlanc has received the 2018 Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence in Higher Education. The award recognizes a university president or chancellor who has demonstrated outstanding leadership qualities. The award is named for former University of Notre Dame President Reverend Theodore M. Hesburgh, who passed away in 2015.

“As we celebrate TIAA Institute’s 20th Anniversary, we are proud to honor Paul LeBlanc, an innovator and committed leader who exemplifies that education can change the world and that we can all be better for it,” says Stephanie Bell-Rose, TIAA senior managing director and head of the TIAA Institute. “Under President LeBlanc’s leadership, SNHU is in a better position to provide its diverse student population with the necessary tools to build a successful future.”

As SNHU president for 14 years, LeBlanc has grown the school from 2,500 students to more than 100,000 and has made it the second largest non-profit to provide online higher education in the nation. Additionally, LeBlanc was named one of America’s Ten Most Innovative College Presidents by Washington Monthly, has received the NH State Merit Award from the New England Board of Higher Education, and won the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the NH High Tech Council.

“I am humbled and honored to accept this award on behalf of the entire SNHU community,” says LeBlanc. “I hope I can realize even a small part of what Rev. Hesburgh accomplished in terms of social justice and the role of higher education in making the world a better place.”

The American Council on Education (ACE) convenes an independent panel of judges to administer the Hesburgh Award on the TIAA Institute’s behalf.

“It is a privilege for ACE to join the TIAA Institute in recognizing the achievements of visionary leaders like Paul J. LeBlanc who are never satisfied with the status quo and always looking around the corner for answers to some of higher education’s most vexing questions,” says ACE President Ted Mitchell. “Paul’s work at Southern New Hampshire University has extended access to quality education from SNHU’s physical campus to tens of thousands of students around the world and sparked innovations that have led to greater opportunity and student success across the entire American higher education community.”