Brian Williams, an experienced senior administrator in the higher education and non-profit spheres, including as a vice president at Knox College, has been named as ACM Vice President and Director of Faculty Development and Grant Programs.
In making the announcement, ACM President Christopher Welna said, “We’re delighted to welcome Brian back to the ACM, as he brings a strong record of experiences in teaching, advancement and strategic thinking for liberal arts colleges. We hope to significantly expand faculty development opportunities for ACM faculty members.”
Brian Williams
In his new position, Williams will take a key role in leading, managing, and expanding ACM’s portfolio of faculty development and grant projects, which currently include wide-ranging consortial collaborations to develop innovative teaching practices and curricula, encourage multi-disciplinary learning, harness new instructional technologies, and address the economic challenges facing liberal arts colleges.
“I am very excited to have the opportunity to help lead the faculty development and grant programs for the ACM member colleges and look forward to the opportunities we’ll pursue and implement together in the years to come,” said Williams.
Williams, who will join the ACM staff in early June, is currently Vice President of Advancement at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH. Prior to that, he served for seven years as Vice President of Development at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, the world’s largest children’s museum.
A 1986 graduate of Knox College, Williams has strong roots in the ACM. He returned to his alma mater in 2000 as Director of Planned Giving and was named Vice President for Advancement in 2001. During the next five years he directed successful annual and comprehensive fundraising campaigns and was closely involved in strategic planning, communications, budgeting, and policy-making for the college.
During his career, Williams has secured and managed significant grants from a wide range of foundations and government agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Kresge Foundation, Lilly Endowment Inc., the US Institute of Museum and Library Services, and NASA.
Williams received a law degree from Indiana University-Bloomington in 1989, after which he served as a judicial clerk for Judge Michael S. Kanne on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He then practiced law for two years in the Chicago office of Vedder Price before leaving the law to pursue and receive a Master of Arts in history in 1994 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Over a six year period prior joining the Advancement team at Knox, Williams taught courses in legal research and writing, first as a Senior Lecturer at the Northwestern University School of Law and then as Senior Lecturer and Director of the Legal Methods Program at Cornell University Law School, where he designed, proposed, and implemented a full-year legal methods curriculum.
In leading ACM’s grant-funded faculty development programs, Williams will succeed Elizabeth Ciner and David Schodt, who have served for the past two years as Senior Program Officers for Faculty and Staff Development Programs and are now retiring.
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