After 40 years in college presidents’ offices—and 23 years as a president himself—Chuck supports educational institutions and their leaders with a student-centered focus, helping them access and utilize new tools to build a sustainable future for higher ed.
Chuck would be the first to tell you that his undergraduate experience changed his life, thanks in part to the personal interest his college’s president took in his life and his potential. He graduated knowing the positive impact higher education and its leadership could have on young people, and he chose to dedicate his career to the field. Chuck devoted the next four decades to a variety of colleges and universities, experiencing both public and private institutions of all sizes. His higher ed career culminated in a stint as president of the University of Central Missouri, where he earned the Governor’s Economic Development Award for the creation of the Missouri Innovation campus, and then as chancellor of Henderson State University, where he arrived during a severe financial crisis and achieved the largest cost containment in the shortest amount of time for a four-year public university.
Excited about the opportunity to share strategies and offer tangible support to other college and university leaders, Chuck joined Husch Blackwell in 2023. He works with the firm’s higher education clients as a consultant, with a focus on policy, strategy, and enhancing institutional performance and outcomes. The author of Colleges on the Brink: The Case for Financial Exigency, Chuck knows that the paradigm for higher ed has permanently shifted in recent years and that schools and their leaders are searching for new skills and new tools as they look to build a sustainable, data-driven model for the future.
In Chuck, clients find an active listener who deeply understands their world and empathizes with their challenges. His goal is to support institutions not just in fulfilling their missions but in achieving their performance aspirations, and he partners with schools in asking what’s possible…then ensuring they have the support they need to accomplish it.