Dr. Patrick F. Leahy joined Monmouth University as president on August 1, 2019. He was unanimously selected by the Board of Trustees and members of the Presidential Search Committee following a comprehensive nationwide search.
As Monmouth’s 10th president, Leahy has navigated through a global pandemic; implemented an ambitious five-year strategic plan—Excellence. Access. Ambition—to chart a course toward being a national leader at integrating academic excellence and student access; secured an invitation to join the Coastal Athletic Association (CAA), one of the nation’s leading mid-major Division I conferences; and launched a major capital campaign which aims to raise well over $100 million in support of the strategic plan.
As chair of the Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music, Leahy has announced plans to build a $45 million, 30,000-square-foot-building, designed to celebrate the history of American music, and has helped to launch the American Music Honors, a major fundraising event that brings legendary performers to campus, and garnering international media coverage.
During his tenure, Monmouth University has welcomed its most diverse and academically prepared classes in the school’s history, setting new year-over-year benchmarks in almost all enrollment measures. At the same time, nearly 50% of the first-year class are FLI (first-generation and/or low-income) students. This integration of excellence and access has enabled Monmouth to reach its highest ever “U.S. News & World Report” ranking, jumping 11 places from 28 to 17 in three years, while being recognized as an Innovative School. Recognition for Monmouth’s upward academic trajectory has included accolades in Washington Monthly’s “Master’s University” and “Best Bang for the Buck Colleges: Northeast” lists; in Money magazine’s “Best Colleges for Your Money;” in the Forbes list of “America’s Top Colleges;” and on Princeton Review’s “Best Colleges” list.
Expanding graduate studies, Leahy has championed two new doctoral programs, including the Doctor of Occupational Therapy, which enrolled its first class in 2021, and the Doctor of Social Work in Human Rights Leadership, which welcomed its first cohort in 2023. The University now boasts four doctoral programs.
Leahy has also made investment in student-facing campus facilities a priority, with recent examples including new facilities for: the Intercultural Center; the Linda Grunin Simulation Lab and Learning Center, a joint partnership between Monmouth University and Monmouth Medical Center, at the Monmouth Graduate Center; five new state-of-the-art Occupational Therapy Laboratories; the Parton Broadcasting Center, located on the second floor of the OceanFirst Bank Center; and the new Center for Entrepreneurship, located within the Leon Hess Business School in Bey Hall. In addition, Leahy has transformed the University’s marquee building—the Great Hall—into a welcoming, vibrant, student-friendly space, which includes the construction of the Parson Café and renovations designed to replicate the reading rooms of our nation’s most historic libraries. Despite the significant investment in the campus, the University’s outstanding debt was reduced to practically zero over this time.
He has also engaged Monmouth in national conversations on racial justice. With the full support of the Board of Trustees, the University removed Woodrow Wilson’s name from its signature administrative center, and established a permanently endowed Diversity Initiatives Fund, with an initial allocation of $3 million. In 2021, Leahy secured funding to launch the Social Justice Academy, an initiative operating out of The School of Education to provide direct support to K-12 school systems in Monmouth and Ocean counties for their ongoing social justice education and curriculum development efforts.
His external leadership positions include serving as the vice chair of the Independent Colleges and Universities of New Jersey (ICUNJ). In recent years, he has served a two-year term as a board member for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), as a member of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s Higher Education Restart Advisory Group, and as vice chair of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference before joining the CAA in 2022.
Leahy has been recognized on the “ROI-NJ” Higher Ed Presidents Honor Roll, for three consecutive years, on the “ROI-NJ” Influencer list, and for several years on the “NJBIZ” Power 50 Education list. Leahy was named just one of 17 leaders in Higher Education by The National Diversity Council at the 17th Annual National Diversity & Leadership Conference.
Prior to joining Monmouth, Leahy served a successful seven-year term as president of Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. At Wilkes, Leahy was instrumental in the development of the “Gateway to the Future Strategic Plan,” which included: the introduction of 20 new academic programs and the university’s first honors program; the launch of the university’s first Ph.D. program; more than $100 million in transformative campus enhancements; and strategic investments in faculty scholarship and research. During his tenure, Wilkes earned the distinction of becoming a Doctoral/Professional University under the Carnegie Classifications. He also led the introduction of seven new NCAA Division III athletic teams and the region’s only collegiate marching band.
Prior to his time at Wilkes, Leahy was a senior administrative leader at The University of Scranton in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He first served as vice president for university relations, successfully completing a $129 million comprehensive capital campaign. He was then promoted to executive vice president, where he was responsible for development, government relations, undergraduate and graduate enrollment, intercollegiate athletics, planning, and information technology. Leahy also taught in the Business Leadership Honors Program.
Before moving to Scranton, Leahy was co-founder and president of the Business Affairs Forum, a 15,000-member distance learning community for alumni of the nation’s MBA programs. He has also worked as an investment officer for a venture capital firm, as an account executive for a Fortune 500 company, and as a development officer for his undergraduate alma mater, Georgetown University.
A native of Towson, Maryland, Leahy holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Georgetown University, where he spent his junior year abroad at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland. He earned two master’s degrees from Cornell University in business administration and in labor relations, where he was both a Fried Fellow and a CEED Fellow—the latter of which affording him the opportunity to live and work for an extended period in Moscow, Russa. In 2009, he earned a Doctor of Education degree from the University of Pennsylvania, focusing his dissertation research on organizational change in higher education. Leahy and his wife, Amy, have four children: Grace, Molly, Jack, and Brian.