MSU President's Newspaper Column
July 2, 2022
In the home stretch of filling important leadership positions
I am delighted to announce that Amber Hill has joined the Mayville State University family as our next Vice President for Business Affairs. She will officially begin her duties at the university in August. We look forward to welcoming her to our campus and community.
Amber brings diverse experience and strong leadership in non-profit, business, government, and higher education, creating a breadth of solid qualifications that will serve our students, faculty, and staff well. She has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a master’s degree in information technology management. In addition, she is a licensed Certified Public Accountant. She also has certifications in government finance management and human resource management. She is a graduate of the Community College Business Officers Leadership Academy, the President’s Leadership Academy, and Project Center for Rural Leadership programs.
Ms. Hill comes to Mayville State University from Northland Pioneer College in Holbrook, Ariz., where she is Director for Financial Services/Controller. A member of the president’s leadership council, she is a contributing member of the policy and procedure group, Title IX team, and process mapping initiative. Among many other areas of involvement, she has served on the strategic planning group and the diversity, equality, and inclusion group.
Her noteworthy accomplishments include a successful migration of payroll systems; collaborative efforts across divisions in forging sweeping changes in the purchasing procedures; and bringing a unified collaborative approach to human resources and the compensation process. She enjoys challenges and leading teams through them with mission and vision in mind.
Amber has compiled a variety of experiences, skills, and abilities in 24 years of professional experience that will be valuable in her role as Vice President for Business Affairs at Mayville State University. Her experiences include 15 years of financial planning and analysis with county, city, and higher education entities; eight years of developing and implementing the full budget and monitoring cycle for government entities; 15 years of preparing and publishing government-wide and business-type financial statements for public entities; administration of risk management policies, procedures and entities; oversight of and review of contracts; and 14 years of responsibility for long-term planning and financing for infrastructure and capital spending. She has also served as a federal congressional aid and registered lobbyist to the Arizona state legislature.
We were fortunate to connect with Amber through the work of AGB Search, a firm that has been assisting us not only with the Vice President for Business Affairs search, but also the Vice President for Academic Affairs search.
On behalf of the entire Mayville State family, I extend my sincere appreciation and gratitude to Mr. Steve Bensen, who has been serving as our Interim Vice President for Business Affairs since April of 2020. Mr. Bensen had served in the role of Vice President for Business Affairs at Mayville State 30 years when he retired in 2017. He is remembered as one of the most treasured administrators Mayville State has known. Steve agreed to take a break from his retirement to help us out in a time of great need. His expertise, dedication, and hard work have been invaluable to us as we have addressed many challenges, made difficult decisions, and taken several positive strides, including improving the university’s financial position.
The search to fill the Academic Affairs position is currently in process. We hosted three candidates for the position on campus the week of June 20, and we hope to successfully fill the position in the next short while. (Since this writing, Dr. Brian Huschle was hired to fill the Vice President for Academic Affairs position. See more.)
The filling of the Vice President for Business Affairs and Vice President for Academic Affairs positions on a permanent basis has been and continues to be an extremely important objective, one that helps to keep Mayville State University on the course for success. I thank all who have served and continue to serve on the search committees and all who have helped to advance this critical process in any way. The future is bright!