Kim Mooney announced Tuesday that she plans to retire as Franklin Pierce University president next June, following the conclusion of the current academic year. 

Mooney, a 1983 Franklin Pierce graduate who recently began her 16th year at the university and her eighth year as President, noted her successful ongoing working partnerships with faculty and staff, and with the university’s board of trustees, whom she had informed of her plan to retire at their annual June board meeting.

“I am so proud of the community of students, staff, faculty, alumni, parents, trustees, my senior leadership team, and others who have worked with me – and with each other – so diligently in recent years to ensure a bright and successful future for the university,”  Mooney said in a video announcing her impending retirement.

A former trustee who had previously served as the university’s provost and vice president for academic affairs, Mooney is also the first Franklin Pierce alumna to serve as its leader. 

“During her distinguished tenure at Franklin Pierce, Doctor Mooney was engaged on campus first as an undergraduate student, then as a trustee, provost, and ultimately as the university’s president,” stated Frederick W. Pierce IV, chair of the university’s board of trustees. “Her efforts, service, commitment and results in all of those capacities have been nothing short of exemplary.”

As president, Mooney has tripled the university’s endowment, prioritized initiatives to support student success that led to an increase in the university’s average student retention rate and established an ongoing strategic planning process, working with colleagues to develop the Pierce@60 strategic plan to establish clear milestones for the future. 

The school’s announcement of Mooney’s retirement also notes that Franklin Pierce has increased collaboration with civic leaders, businesses, municipalities, nonprofits and health care facilities locally, regionally and nationally, and received national recognition for its response to the COVID-19 pandemic for effective planning and communication.

Her tenure also included the formation of a DEI office and a full-time leadership position on campus and an initiative to expand flagship graduate programs in allied health fields to promote a greater national presence and to establish Franklin Pierce University’s work at the leading edge of hybrid medical education.

Mooney achieved the restructuring of academics at the Rindge campus through establishing a College of Business, College of Health and Natural Sciences and College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. 

“This has allowed the undergraduate curriculum and degree programs to embrace their liberal arts roots, while offering professional degree programs increasingly of interest to today’s undergraduate students,” stated Frederick Pierce.

Pierce also called Mooney’s pending retirement “very bittersweet for the board of trustees.”

“We thank her for her tireless, dedicated, heartfelt and hugely successful work at Franklin Pierce University and wish her well in retirement. She has dramatically grown in-demand graduate programs, increased retention, bolstered and grown a premier Division II athletics program and led great strides forward financially—and the entire university will miss her leadership, vision and Raven pride,” he stated.

A national search for Mooney’s successor will start soon and will be led by the trustees.