Mission in Action: CGU Alum Steps Into Presidency at William Peace University

There’s a shift slowly taking place at the top levels of American higher education. 

Since 1986, the share of women leading American colleges and universities has crept from roughly 10 percent to just over 30. That’s four decades to move twenty percentage points. Is that progress? Yes, but measured against the pace of change almost everywhere else, it is also an indictment of how slowly institutions reform themselves. 

Jennifer Walsh, a double alum of Claremont Graduate University’s School of Social Science, Policy & Evaluation has spent her career thinking about exactly that problem. Now she’ll have the chance to put that training into action as the 13th president of William Peace University in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Walsh is one of a growing number of women stepping into presidencies at institutions across the country, and her path from CGU doctoral student to university president offers a revealing window into what graduate education, at its best, can produce. 

CGU President Michelle Bligh sees the momentum building. 

“It’s encouraging to see more women serving as university presidents, although there’s still important work ahead,” she said. “We also know that representation matters. When students see women leading institutions, they can more readily imagine themselves doing the same.” 

A Return to a Familiar Place 

Claremont and the Claremont Colleges got to Jennifer early in life. 

As a child, she lived just north of the Village, riding her bicycle down to the public library, absorbing what she would later describe as the magnetic pull of a college town. “The Claremont college-town atmosphere made a real impression on me,” Walsh recalled. “To me, the colleges seemed like magical places where ideas abounded and opportunity was everywhere.” 

The impression held. When graduate school came into view, so did Claremont. Walsh had been accepted to a doctoral program at her undergraduate institution, UC Riverside, but a faculty mentor encouraged her to look elsewhere. CGU was her first choice, and despite initial concerns about the cost of a private graduate institution, a generous financial aid package made it possible. 

“[Coming back to CGU] felt like returning to a place that had already shaped my imagination about what higher education could be,” she said.  

She enrolled directly in the doctoral program and as a benefit she hadn’t fully anticipated, earned her M.A. in politics along the way. That master’s degree allowed her to begin teaching at nearby Chaffey Community College while completing her dissertation. 

Thinking Across Disciplines 

What Walsh found at CGU was not a program that siloed her into a single methodology or field. It was the opposite. 

“CGU was one of the few institutions that truly encouraged interdisciplinarity,” she said. “I had faculty from across the Claremont consortium, and I was able to structure my doctoral coursework in a way that brought together government, economics, international relations, public administration, political theory, and law.” 

Her dissertation focused on prosecutorial and judicial discretion within California’s Three Strikes law, a subject at the intersection of criminal justice, constitutional law, and public policy.  

That breadth didn’t happen by accident. It was built, in large part, by the people around her.  

The most influential was Professor Joseph Bessette of Claremont McKenna College, who taught her American politics courses at CGU, served as her primary mentor through her dissertation and early career, and remains in contact with her today. 

“His guidance, advocacy, and encouragement had a lasting and profoundly positive influence on my academic and leadership career,” Walsh said. “I remain very grateful.”  

President Bligh thinks that kind of mentorship is central to what CGU is designed to do. 

“Interdisciplinarity has been part of CGU’s identity since our founding,” she said. “We believe the most significant problems — and the most exciting opportunities — exist at the intersections of disciplines. That experience prepares graduates to lead in environments where collaboration across expertise isn’t optional. It’s essential.” 

From Scholarship to Institution-Building 

The move from the classroom to the administrator’s office was not, for Walsh, a departure from the intellectual work she had trained to do. It was a continuation of it. 

“My doctoral education trained me to take complex problems and break them into smaller, more understandable parts,” she said. “I found that those same habits of mind translated naturally into administration.” 

Her training as a political scientist gave her a deep conviction that institutions are not fixed. They are made by people, which means they can be remade. 

“Studying policymaking in the American context gave me a deep appreciation for the idea that systems are designed by people, and therefore can be redesigned by people,” she said. “We are not passive observers of institutions. We have agency. We can build something better, more effective, and more just.” 

Before William Peace, Walsh held leadership roles at Azusa Pacific and Hawai’i Pacific University, where she launched thirty new degree programs in high-demand fields. Across each stop, the throughline was the same. 

“It has always been about student success,” she said. “I have been drawn to institutions where students come first and education is understood as a pathway to opportunity. That is what I valued at CGU, and it is what I cherish at Peace today.” 

Leading William Peace 

William Peace University has a distinctive identity in the Research Triangle (the greater Raleigh-Durham region of North Carolina) — small, relationship-centered, historically committed to expanding educational access, and positioned steps away from some of the country’s most dynamic employers and research institutions. 

The institution’s founding mission of expanding opportunity for women resonates with Walsh in ways that are not abstract. Her maternal grandmother, orphaned young, was able to become a teacher after graduating from a women’s college in Texas with the support of a sponsor. One educational opportunity changed the trajectory of an entire family. 

“When I think about Peace’s legacy, especially its founding history as an institution that expanded educational opportunity for women, I do not experience that as abstract history,” she said. “I see it as a living mission.” 

In her first year, Walsh’s priorities will inevitably be shaped by that same conviction. Listening comes first. To the students, faculty, staff, alumni, and employer partners. From there, the work is about balance and preserving what makes William Peace distinctive while expanding its reach, and growing access in ways that are genuinely flexible for adult learners, veterans, military-affiliated students, and working professionals who need pathways designed around their lives.  

“Peace has always represented confidence, opportunity, and the power of education to expand what is possible,” she said. 

For President Bligh, Walsh’s trajectory is precisely the kind of outcome CGU has focused on providing its students.

“There’s something especially meaningful about seeing alumni lead institutions that will shape the next generation of students,” she said. “It reminds us that the impact of graduate education extends far beyond an individual’s career. It influences the communities and organizations they go on to serve.” 

Walsh echoed that sentiment. “I could have never envisioned my career turning out the way it did,” she said. “But CGU opened doors I didn’t know existed.”