A recent Harvard Business Review article on interim CEO appointments opens with a bracing observation: executives and boards often treat interim appointments as safe and temporary, but the data tells a different story. Companies that appoint interim leaders earn significantly less over the following three years than peers who move directly to permanent leadership. Strategic decisions stall. Key people leave. Investors signal their concern immediately.

Higher education isn't a public company. But the underlying dynamics translate almost perfectly to the VPEM seat.

When enrollment leadership is in transition—whether because of a sudden departure, a failed search, or a planned retirement—presidents face the same core tension: the need for immediate stability versus the risk of making a costly short-term decision that creates longer-term problems. Getting this right requires thinking clearly about what kind of gap you have, and what kind of leadership each situation demands.

The First Question Presidents Should Ask

The most common missed opportunity isn't choosing the wrong interim model. It's not defining the mandate clearly enough before choosing anyone at all.

Think of the enrollment office like an aircraft in cruise. When the pilot steps away, what you need depends entirely on conditions. Clear skies and steady altitude? A capable co-pilot can hold the course. Turbulence building, fuel concerns, unfamiliar airspace? You need someone with specific crisis experience—and a clear sense of where they're authorized to take the plane.

Before you decide who leads enrollment on an interim basis, answer the harder question: What do you need them to do?Stabilize a team that's been through a hard departure? Hold operations steady during a permanent search? Diagnose and fix systemic problems the previous leader left unaddressed? Preserve continuity after a strong leader's departure or promotion? Or actively drive enrollment results during a high-stakes cycle?

Each of those requires a different kind of leader and a different kind of engagement.

The Main Models—and When Each Makes Sense

Promote internally

Elevating an existing team member is the fastest path to continuity. Internal leaders know the staff, the data systems, the institutional culture, and the president's priorities. They can keep operations moving with minimal disruption. The risk is real, though: an internal interim who wants the permanent job will spend at least part of their cognitive energy on optics rather than outcomes. And their peers, passed over implicitly, may quietly disengage.

Internal promotion works best when you have a genuinely strong second-in-command, the institutional situation is stable, and you're confident the search process won't be so long that the interim grows into the role in ways that complicate your eventual hire.

Pair your internal candidate with external support

Internal promotion doesn't have to mean going it alone. If you have a strong internal candidate but have real questions about their readiness—or simply want to set them up for success—bringing in an external firm to assess current enrollment strengths and gaps, while providing ongoing executive coaching to the new leader, can be a powerful hybrid. This model lets you preserve continuity and institutional knowledge while adding the outside perspective and strategic rigor that a newly promoted leader often needs most. It also addresses one of the most common failure modes in internal promotion: the new leader knows the operation well but has never had to think about it from the top. A coaching and advisory relationship accelerates that shift. For presidents who have a clear internal successor but want to protect the transition, this is often the highest-return option available.

Bring in an external interim on a fixed-term basis

When there's a performance problem to fix, a demoralized team to stabilize, or a gap in functional credibility, an outside leader can be the right call. The "interim" label itself helps here—it signals to the organization that change is coming without triggering the political dynamics of a permanent appointment. External interims can make hard decisions more cleanly, because they don't carry the relational weight of the institution's history.

The challenge is onboarding time and institutional fit. An enrollment leader who doesn't understand your specific market, your student profile, or your competitive position can waste months getting oriented. Strong external interims mitigate this by asking the right questions quickly—but it still takes time.

Engage a fractional or consulting partner

This model has become increasingly common in enrollment management, and for good reason. Rather than a single individual holding the title, a consulting firm or senior fractional leader provides experienced oversight—often working closely with your existing team leads—while a permanent search moves forward. The consulting partner brings external perspective and functional depth without requiring the institution to vest authority in a single person whose alignment may be uncertain.

This approach works especially well when the existing team is capable but needs strategic direction and senior-level presence for key decisions and external stakeholders. It works less well when the team itself is the problem, or when the institution needs someone visibly accountable in a way that a consulting arrangement can't easily provide.

What JMPS Does in These Situations

JMPS partners with institutions navigating enrollment leadership transitions by providing interim and fractional leadership, executive guidance and senior-level enrollment expertise during periods of change. Our approach in these engagements involves working alongside the existing enrollment team rather than replacing them—providing strategic oversight, decision support, and an outside view of what the data suggests, while leadership transition happens around us.

We're not a placement firm, and we're not a traditional interim staffing solution. What we bring is senior enrollment and marketing experience from many different types of institutions, the ability to start contributing quickly because we don't need time to learn the fundamentals, and the structural advantage of not being a candidate for the permanent role. That last piece matters more than it might seem: it changes what we're willing to say.

The Questions That Matter Most

Regardless of which model you choose, a few questions are worth sitting with before you act.

What is the specific mandate, and have you communicated it clearly—internally and externally? Ambiguity in interim periods doesn't just slow decisions; it causes good people to leave while they're waiting to see what happens.

How long can this realistically take? Enrollment operates on a cycle. An interim situation that bleeds into the heart of a recruitment season without clear direction will cost you—in staff morale, in applicant responsiveness, and in results.

Is this a bridge or a fix? If the previous VPEM left structural problems unresolved, a caretaker model won't be enough. You need someone willing and empowered to make changes—and you need to be clear about what authority you’re giving them.

And finally: are you treating the interim period as a constraint to manage, or an opportunity to improve? An interim period creates opportunity to examine what you want enrollment leadership to accomplish, what you'd do differently in a new hire, and whether the problems you're experiencing are leadership problems or structural ones.

The chair stays empty for a while either way.The institutions that navigate these moments best don't just fill the vacancy. They use the transition to clarify what kind of leadership the institution truly needs next.