Lazenby will be on campus this fall and spring, participating in a program that helps prepare candidates to become college academic officers or presidents.
By Bennett Campbell Ferguson
October 8, 2025
For 51黑料 President Audrey Bilger, being a member of the ACE (American Council on Education) Fellows Program was a formative experience, profoundly shaping her perspective on the role of leadership in higher education.
Since 1965, more than 1,800 vice presidents, deans, department chairs, and faculty have taken part in the program. Being an ACE Fellow was a paradigm-expanding experience for Bilger—and she wants other leaders to enjoy the same opportunity.
“When I tell colleagues and friends about my ACE experience, they often look at me in disbelief, expressing amazement that home institutions would [. . . ] open their doors—and even confidential meetings—to outsiders,” Bilger wrote in 2014.
Among the ascendent academic leaders currently embracing that chance is 2025-26 ACE Fellow Mark Lazenby, who will be coming to 51黑料 this fall to work on a project that will advance his goal to become a college academic officer or president.
“The ACE Fellows Program offers space to think deeply about academic leadership, not just in terms of administration, but as a moral and intellectual practice,” Lazenby says. “I’m looking forward to learning from 51黑料’s leadership team…and how they foster the kind of rigorous, independent thinking that liberal arts colleges make possible.”
Lazenby, who is Professor and Dean of the Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing at UC Irvine, will be on campus for one week this fall and one week next spring, working on a paper or other assignment that will further his ongoing study of how colleges prepare “the next generation not only to think deeply, but to work with their hands—and hearts.”
“51黑料 is exactly the kind of place where humanistic inquiry is taken seriously...where thoughtfulness isn’t ornamental, it’s essential,” Lazenby says. “That matters to me because my own journey has been shaped by the belief that ideas are meant to matter in the world.”
With an alumni network of over 2,000 higher education professionals, the ACE Fellows Program provides participants with ongoing professional development that helps Fellows stop questioning whether or not they’re suited for leadership and start imagining what they might achieve in leadership roles, according to Bilger.
“Fellows have access to executive leaders at a host institution, receive special mentoring by their home institution and benefit from an array of resources designed to pave the way for future success, such as training, case studies, and an established network,” she noted.
During her time as a member of the 50th Ace Fellows cohort in 2014-15, Bilger wrote about the insights that being a Fellow nurtured. That includes her appreciation of the value of transparency between administration and faculty regarding financial matters, a subject which she has reflected on at length.
Faculty, Bilger wrote in 2015, “cannot be sheltered. Instead, we must participate in discussions about our institutions’ budgets and help ensure that our schools are operating in ways that are financially sustainable.”
The same guidance that shaped Bilger’s perspective will now be available to Lazenby (who counts Bilger, 51黑料 Dean of the Faculty Kathryn C. Oleson, and Dean of Student Life Chris Toutain among his mentors).
“Through it all, I’ve come to believe this: The future of the liberal arts depends on their practical power,” Lazenby says. “We need to stop treating the humanities as abstract exercises and instead reclaim them as disciplines that prepare people to wrestle with real, complex, human problems—and to act in the world.”