The Opportunity:
Ursinus College seeks a Controller to lead the College's accounting operations and serve as a principal financial partner to the Vice President for Finance and Administration.
This role is built for an accountant who wants both halves of the job. One half is stewardship: accurate books, a disciplined close, a clean audit, and internal controls that hold. The other half is strategy - the Controller at Ursinus is not confined to the rearview mirror. You will help shape the multi-year financial model, support the Board’s budget and long-range planning work, and ensure that the numbers underneath every major institutional decision are ones the College can defend.
Ursinus is a residential liberal arts college of approximately 1,300 students and, like much of the sector, is actively managing enrollment pressure and a multi-year effort to align its cost structure with revenue. That work succeeds only if the underlying financial information is fast, clean, and trusted. Guaranteeing that is why this position exists.
Key Responsibilities
Financial Reporting and the Annual Audit:
- Own the integrity, accuracy, and timeliness of all accounting and financial reporting for the College.
- Produce monthly, quarterly, and annual financial statements, and deliver them on a schedule leadership can plan around.
- Manage the year-end close and serve as primary liaison to the external auditors, coordinating the annual audit from planning through issuance of the audited financial statements.
- Prepare and review the audit schedules, footnote support, and management representations that underpin the financial statements.
- Support financial reporting to the Board of Trustees and its Audit and Finance committees.
Accounting Operations and Internal Control:
- Direct all general accounting activity, ensuring completeness and compliance with GAAP and applicable regulation.
- Maintain the chart of accounts and fund structure, and govern changes to both.
- Design, document, monitor, and continuously strengthen internal controls over financial transactions, including segregation of duties and delegation of authority.
- Ensure timely and accurate processing of accounts payable, disbursements, purchasing, and contract administration.
- Oversee reconciliation of all balance sheet accounts on a defined cycle, with exceptions escalated and cleared rather than carried forward.
Endowment, Debt, Capital, and Restricted Funds:
- Oversee endowment accounting, including unitization, the annual spending distribution, and compliance with donor restrictions and UPMIFA.
- Reconcile gift and pledge activity with Advancement, and ensure restricted funds are released and reported correctly.
- Account for capital projects and fixed assets from authorization through capitalization and depreciation.
- Maintain debt accounting and monitor compliance with bond covenants; prepare continuing disclosure filings and support rating agency and lender reporting.
- Oversee grant accounting for federal, state, and private awards, including financial reporting to sponsors.
Strategic Partnership with the VPFA:
- Serve as a thought partner to the VPFA on the College's financial position, translating accounting results into implications leadership can act on.
- Collaborate on the accounting foundation for the multi-year financial model such as actuals, run rates, commitments, and the constraints that govern what is possible.
- Monitor cash position and near-term liquidity, and produce the cash forecasting that supports operating and capital decisions.
- Advise on the accounting and reporting consequences of proposed initiatives, new revenue ventures, and financing structures before decisions are made.
Compliance and Tax:
- Ensure compliance with federal, state, and local requirements, including IRS, U.S. Department of Education, and funding agency regulation.
- Oversee preparation of Forms 990 and 990-T and related filings, and manage exposure areas such as unrelated business income and nonresident withholding.
- Oversee institutional financial reporting obligations, including the IPEDS finance components and other required external surveys.
- Monitor emerging accounting standards and regulatory changes, assess their impact on the College, and implement them on schedule.
- Maintain and periodically refresh the College's financial policies.
Team Leadership:
- Supervise, develop, and mentor the Controller's Office staff across general accounting, accounts payable, purchasing, and contracts.
- Set clear standards for accuracy, turnaround, and service, and hold the team to them.
- Build depth and cross-coverage so that critical functions do not depend on a single person.
- Foster a culture of service, precision, and continuous improvement across a team that supports every department on campus.
Systems and Process Improvement:
- In partnership with IT, own the operation, configuration, and optimization of the College's financial systems, currently Oracle Cloud ERP.
- Identify and implement process improvements that increase efficiency, accuracy, and transparency, and reduce manual effort in the close.
- Partner with Information Technology and functional departments to ensure clean integration of financial data across systems.
First-Year Priorities:
- Deliver a clean, on-time audit and a shortened, better-documented year-end close.
- Assess the current state of internal controls and reconciliation discipline, and close identified gaps.
- Advance the College's use of Oracle Cloud ERP, with an emphasis on reporting and automation.
- Establish the recurring financial reporting package the VPFA, President, and the Board rely on.
Qualifications
Required:
- Bachelor's degree in accounting, finance, or a closely related field.
- Active CPA license.
- Minimum of seven years of progressively responsible accounting experience, including at least three years supervising professional staff.
- Strong working knowledge of GAAP as applied to not-for-profit organizations, including net asset classification, contribution and endowment accounting, and fund accounting.
- Demonstrated ownership of a year-end close and an external financial statement audit.
- Proficiency with an enterprise ERP system and advanced Excel skills.
- Exceptional organizational skills, attention to detail, and a record of meeting deadlines.
Preferred:
- Experience in higher education or another complex not-for-profit organization.
- Master's degree in accounting, finance, or business administration.
- Hands-on experience with Oracle Cloud ERP, or leadership of an ERP implementation or optimization.
- Depth in endowment accounting, UPMIFA, gift and grant accounting, and tax-exempt debt.
- Familiarity with federal compliance requirements, including Uniform Guidance and the Single Audit.
- Experience presenting financial information to a governing board or its committees.
Competencies and Attributes:
- Strategic and analytical. Sees past the transaction to the pattern, and past the pattern to the decision.
- Clear communicator. Explains technical accounting to non-accountants such as deans, department chairs, trustees, without condescension and without losing precision.
- Collaborative leader. Builds a team people want to join and want to stay on.
- Unimpeachable integrity. High ethical standards and absolute discretion with confidential information.
- Service-oriented. Treats colleagues across campus as constituents to be served, not requesters to be processed.
- Steady under pressure. Keeps quality high through close, audit, and budget season alike.
Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
Ursinus College is a selective, independent, co-educational, residential liberal arts college of approximately 1500 students located about 25 miles northwest of center city Philadelphia. With a diverse community of students, it is an expectation of all faculty to contribute to the inclusion, engagement, and success of all students. Ursinus is an EEO employer. Ursinus College does not discriminate on grounds of race, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, age, creed, ancestry, veteran status, marital status, disability, or other classification protected by applicable law in the administration of any of its educational programs or activities or with respect to employment.