With the academic year in full swing at Illinois Institute of Technology, a new group of leaders who will play key roles leading the university now and into the future are taking hold.
Illinois Tech President Raj Echambadi announced in May that Kenneth T. Christensen, who was serving as the Carol and Ed Kaplan Armour College Dean of Engineering Endowed Chair, would serve as interim provost, succeeding Peter Kilpatrick, who was appointed as the president of the Catholic University of America. Christensen took over as interim provost on July 1.
Two experienced professionals also recently joined Christensen on the university’s leadership team.
Angela Manning-Hardimon has joined Illinois Tech as its vice president for finance, chief financial officer, and treasurer. She joined the university on July 11. A deeply respected and experienced financial manager, Manning-Hardimon has more than 20 years of experience as a CFO and more than 30 years in finance. She came to Illinois Tech from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, where she oversaw the agency’s operating budget and significant federal and state metropolitan planning transportation funding for the region’s transit agencies and for seven counties and 284 municipalities across Northeastern Illinois. She had also previously served as the managing deputy commissioner and CFO for Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and Chicago’s Midway International Airport.
In early July, Echambadi announced that Mallik Sundharam is joining Illinois Tech as its new vice president for enrollment management and student affairs. He came to the university from Northeastern University, where he served as the associate vice president of enrollment management and the dean of the Office of Global Services. Sundharam’s data analytics-driven approach to enrollment management has reaped great rewards in his career, including directly contributing to Northeastern’s rapid growth in undergraduate and graduate applications over the last four years: applications rose to a record 95,000 in fall 2021 and fall 2022. This approach led to innovative strategies that supported exponential growth such as establishing institutional partnerships, developing nationwide community college pathways, and evolving Northeastern’s digital marketing infrastructure. He also built Northeastern’s global recruitment network, which included its international student enrollment growing to be the largest in the United States and its graduate student body population increasing by more than 20 percent since 2020.