Susan Schultz Huxman

Ninth President, 2016-2025

Susan Schultz Huxman, PhD, has served for more than 38 years in higher education in a variety of faculty and senior administrative and academic leadership roles. She served as Eastern Mennonite University’s ninth president from 2016 to 2025. She is EMU’s first woman president and first academic president, earning the rank of full professor.

During her tenure at EMU, Dr. Huxman advanced the university’s strategic direction; created a more welcoming and inclusive community; provided stability and guidance through the global pandemic; sharpened EMU’s mission, vision and values; and leaned into its Anabaptist heritage and core scriptural mandate to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” (Micah 6:8)

Dr. Huxman led the university in setting a fundraising record of $9.2 million during EMU’s Centennial year and has steered EMU through the second year of its $40-million, first-ever comprehensive campaign for people, programs and facilities, Forward Together: Preparing Tomorrow’s Unifying Leaders 2023-2028, which raised more than $21 million in gifts and commitments in the first two years.

Dr. Huxman served as president of Conrad Grebel University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, from 2011 to 2016. Previously, she served in senior administrative positions in the Elliott School of Communication at Wichita State University in Kansas and Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Dr. Huxman has won numerous awards and recognitions for teaching excellence and continues to teach and mentor when she can. She is a passionate ambassador of a faith-based liberal arts education and made it her mission to open doors of access and belonging for diverse students who aspire to be unifying leaders. Dr. Huxman holds a bachelor of arts in English from Bethel College (Kansas) and a master of arts and PhD in communication from the University of Kansas.