Position Summary
We are seeking a highly collaborative leader who can bring together planning, design, real estate, utilities, and institutional priorities into a unified strategy for campus development. This individual must be skilled in developing sound business cases, engaging senior leaders and stakeholders, building consensus, and communicating project vision, value, risks, and outcomes. Success in this role requires the ability to synthesize complex information, navigate governance processes, and guide strategic initiatives from concept to approval, implementation, and completion.
Salary range is $203,300 to $248,500 annually (commensurate with experience), plus a comprehensive benefits package and relocation assistance if necessary.
The Assistant Vice President for Real Estate, Capital Planning, and Utilities (AVP RECPU) provides leadership and strategic vision for a multidisciplinary organization of approximately 165 support staff, including temporary, on-call, and student employees. Reporting as a senior leader within Infrastructure Planning and Facilities, this position is responsible for advancing an integrated planning and asset management model that supports the full lifecycle of university assets—from strategic acquisition, planning, design, construction, operation, maintenance, occupancy, and renewal through eventual disposition.
The position is responsible for shaping the organization to reinforce collaboration, accountability, innovation, stewardship, and service excellence while fostering a diverse and inclusive work environment that values continual learning and achievement of results. The AVP RECPU provides executive leadership for the university's capital planning and project delivery programs, utility infrastructure systems, and real estate portfolio. This includes oversight of the planning, design, construction, commissioning, and closeout of capital projects; strategic real estate acquisitions and asset management; leasing and occupancy planning; utility infrastructure planning, operation, and maintenance; and alternative project delivery models, including public-private partnerships.
The position oversees annual operating and capital budgets, including utility operations, fuel, salaries, supplies, services, and major capital investments. The AVP RECPU is responsible for ensuring the reliable, efficient, and sustainable delivery of campus utility services while aligning infrastructure investments with institutional priorities and long-term campus development goals.
The AVP RECPU provides leadership and oversight for the offices of Campus Planning, Planning, Design and Construction, Capital Renewal, Real Estate, Leasing and Property Management, and Utilities. Through this broad portfolio, the position administers the continuum of university infrastructure and asset management, ensuring the strategic integration of campus development, utility systems, capital investments, and real estate initiatives to support the university's academic, research, and operational mission.
The successful leader:
- Demonstrates strengths in strategy and leadership across a variety of teams and functions; promotes and monitors operational excellence; builds consensus and fosters effective teams
- Establishes strategic direction and sets priorities to develop and grow; creates and assesses decision variables and KPIs to monitor performance and support strategic approaches
- Develops, directs, and serves as a centralized point of contact to lead, evaluate, and manage all types of projects and partnerships
- Collaborates with and seeks relevant guidance from campus stakeholders, cultivating a high level of trust and collaboration
- Aligns and elevates the continuum of campus planning and capital planning from inception to completion, connecting capital asset management seamlessly to both emerging and long-range university needs and strategic endeavors
- Collaborates with campus partners to nurture a continuous planning and innovation cycle that aligns with university goals and plans
- Ensures a culture that practices and enables a diverse and inclusive environment, building a participative team climate that assumes a proactive stance and seeks innovation solutions, enhancing partnership with university stakeholders (on campus and across the state), delivering outstanding service and creating value for users
- Broadens the capabilities of the Utilities team to take on more value-added initiatives which improve the effectiveness and efficiency of campus operations across the MSU enterprise
- Sets a tone of fiscal diligence, advancing sound fiscal management and employing effective strategies that balance mission with cost effectiveness, innovative solutions, and high-level service and quality
- Promotes and ensures compliance with university policies, procedures and ordinances, state, and federal laws
- Establishes and builds trusting relationships with customers and campus and community partners
These areas include:
Campus Planning is committed to a comprehensive and continuous land use planning process that results in a flexible framework to guide future decision making. The university will consider the use of resources from environmental, regulatory, operational, economic, historic, and cultural perspectives in support of its teaching/learning, research, and outreach mission.
The Capital Renewal Program is the university's primary annual facility reinvestment program. The program addresses deficiencies in our campus facilities and infrastructure, specially building systems at the end of their life cycle. We prioritize projects that address multiple issues, such as life safety, accessibility, infrastructure performance, resource efficiency, and renewal of critical building systems (e.g., electrical, plumbing, HVAC). Our objective is to maintain a long-term, multi-year plan for ongoing, strategic reinvestment in the campus facilities.
- Planning, Design, and Construction
Planning, Design, and Construction provides inspection and management services for campus infrastructure and facilities. The department is responsible for the planning, design, and construction of campus capital projects, utility infrastructure, and cost estimating. Regular updates to the MSU Board of Trustees are expected through regular reports and potential presentations to BOT members and other MSU leadership. The department includes an interior design team that provides teaching and learning spaces, athletic spaces, offices, and public areas on campus. In addition, the staff designs and manages landscaping, roads and sidewalks and is responsible for the long-term physical development of MSU's campus. It develops, manages, and implements the future landscape and land use laid out in the Campus Plan, and supports MSU's Energy Transition Plan by working with decision-makers to focus on energy policies, monitoring and verifying energy consumption and performance on campus and identifying energy-use patterns that lead the campus community to solutions.
This department oversees the Campus Infrastructure Planning Work Group (CIPWG), a broadly-based committee which is chaired by a faculty member. The CIPWG committee provides recommendations to the Executive Vice President for Administration, the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Associate Vice President for Strategic Infrastructure Planning and Facilities regarding the compliance of campus-wide and project-specific planning and design efforts with the Campus Plan. The department serves various stakeholders on campus including Athleti
