Marketing VP to step down

John Veilleux, who has served as Central Michigan University’s Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President of University Communications for the past five years, has announced his intention to resign from his role at the end of the semester. Veilleux accepted an offer to become Rowan University’s inaugural Chief Marketing Officer.

"This is a difficult and bittersweet decision because I have enjoyed my time at Central Michigan University,” Veilleux said. “Each day, my goal was to match the same passion, energy and vibrancy I witnessed in the faculty, staff, and students I was privileged to serve.”

Veilleux joined CMU in January 2020 following a national search announced by then-president Bob Davies. Together with leaders in other divisions, Veilleux helped to strengthen cross-campus collaboration on student recruitment, enrollment and retention efforts, as well as university-wide communication initiatives.

“John has been a collaborative partner and trusted advisor for many leaders throughout the university,” CMU President Neil MacKinnon said. “His leadership, vision, enthusiasm and willingness to push boundaries to achieve great results has paid dividends for CMU over the past several years.”

Veilleux led the university’s rebranding campaign, a market research-driven effort that concluded with the launch of the “We do” brand, which highlights the university’s commitment to hands-on learning, real-world impact and career readiness. Among the outcomes of the campaign: More than 55% increase in main campus and online applications over a three-year period.

• The highest brand recall among CMU’s Michigan peer institutions
• Consecutive years of increases in first-time-in-any-college and transfer student enrollments after more than a decade of enrollment declines.
• More than a dozen national and international awards and honors recognizing the campaign for creativity, effectiveness and execution.

In 2020, Veilleux built a new Digital Strategy team within University Communication to manage the launch of the new www.cmich.edu website. The project involved reviewing, editing, condensing, and removing or migrating approximately 20,000 pages of content in an 18-month period. As part of the process, Veilleux also led the decentralization of content management, empowering hundreds of campus partners to receive training and access to develop and post content including program pages, news stories and more.

Other highlights of Veilleux’s leadership include:

• Creation of an SEO-driven blog strategy, All Things Higher Ed, resulting in more than 930,000 organic visits to the cmich.edu website.
• Development and launch of The Search Bar podcast, which highlights CMU faculty and staff expertise and is available on all major podcast channels.
• Oversight of the university’s communication strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as issue and crisis response communications.
• Support for dozens of campus partner initiatives ranging from university-wide strategic planning efforts to unit-specific stakeholder engagement plans. 

Prior to his arrival at CMU, Veilleux spent 20 years working in leadership roles in communication and marketing at Texas Wesleyan University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania.  He will continue to lead the University Communications team at CMU through the end of the year, before beginning his new role at Rowan University.

Veilleux said he is confident that he is leaving CMU in the hands of a talented, capable team.

“The members of University Communications team and the CMU senior leadership team are among the most outstanding professionals I have ever had the pleasure to serve alongside,” Veilleux said. “President MacKinnon has come in laser-focused on the strategic plan. He is listening and asking questions to learn about CMU and its history. There are exciting things coming, and there are wonderful leaders who will shepherd and encourage that success.”

MacKinnon said he will name an interim leader soon as he evaluates the needs of the team and the university before making a decision.