President Kim Mooney ’83 to Retire in 2024

In a video announcement to the University community, Dr. Kim Mooney '83 today shared the news that she plans to retire from the Presidency of Franklin Pierce University in June of next year, following the conclusion of the current academic year. 

Dr. Mooney, who recently began her 16th year at Franklin Pierce and her 8th year as President, noted her successful ongoing working partnerships with faculty and staff, and with the University’s Board of Trustees, whom she had informed of her plan to retire in June of 2024 at their annual June Board meeting.

“I am so proud of the community of students, staff, faculty, alumni, parents, Trustees, my senior leadership team, and others who have worked with me – and with each other – so diligently in recent years to ensure a bright and successful future for the university,”  Dr. Mooney said in the video announcement.

A former Trustee who had previously served as the University’s Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Mooney is also the first Franklin Pierce alumna to serve as its leader. 

Frederick W. Pierce IV, Chair of the University’s Board of Trustees, reflected on President Mooney’s decades-long commitment and service to her alma mater. “During her distinguished tenure at Franklin Pierce, Dr. Mooney was engaged on campus first as an undergraduate student, then as a Trustee, provost, and ultimately as the University’s President,” Pierce stated. “Her efforts, service, commitment, and results in all of those capacities have been nothing short of exemplary,” he said.

In her leadership of Franklin Pierce, Dr. Mooney has positioned the University for long-term sustainability through clear objectives with significant surpluses and the tripling of the University’s endowment. She also prioritized initiatives to support student success leading to a significant ongoing increase in the University’s average student retention rate and she established an ongoing strategic planning process, working closely with colleagues to develop the Pierce@60 strategic plan to establish clear milestones for the future. 

Her administration has increased Franklin Pierce’s collaboration with civic leaders, businesses, municipalities, nonprofits, and healthcare facilities locally, regionally and nationally. Receiving national recognition for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic for effective planning and communication, the University emerged strong from the pandemic under her leadership and vision to celebrate its 60th anniversary in 2022.

She also fostered the articulation and demonstration of the University’s diversity, equity and inclusion values through establishing a DEI office and a full-time leadership position on campus. Her initiative to expand flagship graduate programs in allied health fields to promote a greater national presence and to establish Franklin Pierce University’s work at the leading edge of hybrid medical education greatly increased full-time graduate student enrollment in a three-year period.

Dr. Mooney achieved the restructuring of academics at the Rindge Campus through establishing a College of Business, College of Health and Natural Sciences, and College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.  “This has allowed the undergraduate curriculum and degree programs to embrace their liberal arts roots, while offering professional degree programs increasingly of interest to today’s undergraduate students,” said Frederick Pierce in noting this achievement. 
 
“I shared my retirement plans this summer with the Board of Trustees to give them time to organize the search process for the next President of Franklin Pierce,” she said in today’s video announcement. 

“Dr. Mooney’s pending retirement is very bittersweet for the Board of Trustees,” stated Pierce. “We thank her for her tireless, dedicated, heartfelt and hugely successful work at Franklin Pierce University and wish her well in retirement,” he said, adding: “She has dramatically grown in-demand graduate programs, increased retention, bolstered and grown a premier Division II athletics program and led great strides forward financially—and the entire university will miss her leadership, vision and Raven pride.”

A national search for Dr. Mooney’s successor will start soon and will be led by the Board of Trustees. A memo is forthcoming from the Trustees describing that process and how members of the University can and will be involved in the search process in the months ahead.

To watch President Mooney’s announcement to the Franklin Pierce University Community, please click here.

← return to news