Ken Iwama

Ken Iwama was appointed Vice President for Regional Campuses and Online Education on July 1, 2024. Prior to this appointment, Ken served as the Chancellor of Indiana University Northwest from 2020-2024. During his tenure at IU Northwest, Ken helped the campus navigate the unprecedented impacts of the worldwide pandemic, leading the university into a new community-engaged era. He cultivated an environment supporting academic and programmatic funding, resulting in a surge in regional campus grant activity and awards. He has worked with his team to collaborate on data-based strategies and empowered the campus efforts to gradually stabilize post-pandemic enrollment declines; for fall 2023, the campus achieved an increase in first-year undergraduate students and the highest number of new applications and admitted students in over a decade.
Ken facilitated IU Northwest to become the first campus after IU Bloomington to implement the signature student-success Groups Scholars Program supporting first-generation students and students of color. IU Northwest is also the first comprehensive public institution in the state to receive designation as a Hispanic- and Minority-Serving Institution, recently achieving the campus’s all-time-high percentages of Hispanic students, 29.1%, and all students of color, 53.9%.
Before coming to IU, Ken served as founding Vice President for the Division of Economic Development, Continuing Studies, and Government Relations for the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. In addition to providing diverse educational programming for degree-seeking, professional certificate, and pre-college students, his division supported faculty research and innovation, government relations, corporate and foundation engagement, specialized student career services, student residential life, workforce development, auxiliary services, and community-based centers and programming. Ken’s division led the college’s strategic priority in re-engaging with the community of Staten Island, one of the five great boroughs of New York City, which resulted in unprecedented resources flowing to the college to grow the educational and research environments needed to support and enhance academic excellence. Of particular note, Ken helped secure over $22 million for major facilities and infrastructure projects as well as academic initiatives supporting the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, Division of Science and Technology, School of Health Sciences, and the School of Business.