He was born in Denmark, grew up in Luxembourg and lived throughout Europe, and Jens Frederiksen’s life has taken him well beyond those borders. He arrived in the United States 24 years ago on a tennis scholarship at Vanderbilt University with no plans on entering the world of academia.
However, a series of undergraduate degrees turned into a master’s program, which led to a Ph. D. and a career in teaching and administration.
Now, Frederiksen has his sights leveled on a new adventure: President of the University of New Haven.
In more than 100 years of operation, the University of New Haven has welcomed just six full-time presidents. Frederiksen will become the seventh, and he is set to begin the formal responsibilities after the current academic term. This semester will offer Frederiksen a chance to prepare for the position and get to know the university community before making the move with his family to Connecticut.
Frederiksen is coming to New Haven from Fisk University, a prestigious HBCU in Nashville, Tenn. His time there began as a visiting professor nearly a decade ago, where he saw a historic institution struggling to stay in operation. In 2016, Frederiksen was introduced as the vice president of institutional advancement, and he grew fundraising totals each year he was in the position. Despite this, the university was still placed on accreditation probation in 2018 by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission for financial responsibility.
“I was sort of thrust into a very difficult set of circumstances where enrollment had plummeted,” Frederiksen said about his time at Fisk. “The university had just a really hard time clearing accreditation issues purely around the financials, and yet the students were magical.”
Faced with the threat of losing accreditation, Frederiksen helped to rally the university community in a fundraising campaign that led to a record $10.7 million in donations for the 2018-2019 fiscal year, with alumni giving increasing from 21% to 35%. The financial gains also allowed the university to apply for and receive multiple federal grants, as well as increase enrollment to record numbers.
“The university had really struggled to raise money and we shattered every record then and raised an extraordinary amount of money,” Frederiksen said. “Next thing you know, we were featured in Forbes as the number one institution in the country for what they called academic stewardship.”
Academic stewardship was a new measure of university effectiveness introduced in 2022, creating a formula that quantifies how much academic impact a college achieves given its overall resources, according to Forbes. Fisk was ranked 29th for “Most Innovative Schools” by the U.S. News and World Report and tenth among all HBCUs in the country in 2021.
Frederiksen cited all these experiences at Fisk as foundational to his goals and visions as he comes to New Haven. The familial feeling of the New Haven community stood out to him, drawing many similarities to what he saw at Fisk, he said.
“I came from kind of a family atmosphere,” he said. “This is just a much larger family, but it still feels this way. I think you can resonate with young people who are incredibly motivated and driven and this is a generation that’s driven by impact too.”
While he is not stepping into formal presidential duties yet, Frederiksen said he has a clear vision for New Haven students and faculty.
“It’s our job to create an institutional framework [for students],” he said. “Of course, that includes facilities, it includes technology upgrades, it still includes running a sustainable small business because that’s in some ways the condition for the possibility of transforming lives and academic excellence.”
Frederiksen will arrive at a university that has gained significant momentum in the last decade. The university has welcomed near-record-size classes in each of the last five years, with full-time enrollment growing from 5,911 to 8,331 since 2019. The Bergami Center for Science and Technology and the Peterson Performance Center – the two newest buildings on campus – are also part of the university’s growth.
For Frederiksen, this momentum is not only promising but is a sign of more to come. The former tennis player used a sports analogy of the ball being on your side and rolling in your favor to describe this phenomenon, which he saw happen at Fisk.
“I don’t see a ceiling,” Frederiksen said. “I genuinely believe that there is a moment in time at this time at this place to just knock everybody’s socks off, and that’s going to take everybody.”
For now, students and faculty can plan on interacting with Frederiksen at different times throughout the spring. He said he plans on taking advantage of the newly introduced Avelo Airlines flight from Nashville to New Haven, as he juggles spending time with his two children at home and preparing for this new stage.
“I think the sky is the limit… this notion of endless possibilities, there’s an entrepreneurial spirit,” he said. “I said to my wife very early on, the University of New Haven’s the one.”
