DECATUR, Ill. – When it was announced in March that Dr. Dean Pribbenow would become 鶹Լ University’s 17th President on July 1, 2025, his first reaction was that he wanted to jump into the challenge of leading 鶹Լ immediately.
“This was challenging for me because as soon as a decision is made, I'm prepared to throw myself into it,” Pribbenow said. “I feel humbled and honored to have been selected as 鶹Լ’s next President, but having to wait a while to get fully underway required much patience. In part, it is because I’m so excited to get to know the people of 鶹Լ.”
, the work begins for Pribbenow, who has been in close contact with 鶹Լ’s Presidential Transition Team (PTT) and Board of Trustees members to make the transition as seamless as possible. He has also been a regular attendee of 鶹Լ events this spring and attended both Commencement ceremonies in May as he starts to build relationships with current students, faculty, staff, alumni, and the Decatur community.
“During the interview process, I picked up on the sense, through many conversations, that people love 鶹Լ. Those who work here love the place, and I think people are drawn here because 鶹Լ matches their values, sense of connectedness, and desire to do meaningful work,” he said. “When people have a passion for a place, you can't help but want to be around them and get to know them. I'm not blind to the fact that there are some challenges on campus, but you can't run away and pretend it isn't the case. You lean into it, engage with people where they're at, and try to show them your vision for moving it forward.”
Pribbenow was born in Wisconsin and grew up in a large family, one of six children, with his father being a Lutheran pastor. When deciding on a college after high school, Pribbenow followed his father and two older brothers and sister to attend Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. As an English major, he developed a passion for teaching and writing.
“I was first drawn to English composition but became particularly interested in poetry, and my senior thesis was an analysis of Robert Frost,” Pribbenow said. “I also was fascinated by Emily Dickinson’s exploration of the human condition through her poetry, and still am today. By the time I graduated, I had developed a passion for writing, and it’s where I first started to realize that I had found a creative outlet for myself.”
Like 鶹Լ, Luther College is a smaller private school with renowned music and athletics programs. Pribbenow’s time at Luther set the stage for his future work at similarly sized schools, including Elmhurst University and his current presidency at 鶹Լ.
“Luther was where I first fell in love with the kind of learning environment that 鶹Լ represents. Students are known on these campuses, and the kinds of opportunities that they are provided both in and outside the classroom are immense,” he said. “I think college for many people is a place where their life starts to grow and transform, and they're wrapped around a network of support and care. I experienced that at Luther, which really informed my thoughts on higher education today.”
After three years of teaching in the high school setting, Pribbenow earned an M.S. in Counseling with a Higher Education Concentration from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. The skills he learned in that program are still invaluable to him.
“It became very evident to me that so much of what impacted students' ability to learn in the classroom was what happened outside the classroom. It happened in their family and personal lives. It piqued my interest in counselor education,” he said. “I use those skills every day. The idea of truly listening – not just pretending to listen – and guidance, empathy, and serving the person in front of you. Ultimately, in some ways, as a pastor, my dad was a counselor. I was surrounded by that growing up, and I think many of those skills wore off on me. Engaging with students, faculty, and others informs how I view people and the world.”
After earning a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Pribbenow has over 20 years of experience in higher education and academic leadership, including serving as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Academic Dean at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisc., before moving to Elmhurst University.
Immediately before taking over at 鶹Լ, Pribbenow served as Elmhurst’s Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty since 2020, starting just as the COVID-19 pandemic began. Helping Elmhurst successfully navigate those challenges is one of Pribbenow’s proudest accomplishments during his tenure there.
“I started there on March 12th, 2020, and that afternoon, I sent a note to the faculty saying, ‘I need you to leave campus.’ I did not stand before the faculty in person until I'd been in the role for almost a year and a half. It was a challenge in how I approached getting to know faculty, students, and responding to new developments all the time,” Pribbenow said. “We committed upfront to staying true to our mission and supporting our students. I believe we did an exceptional job of communicating with the campus and involving them in our decision-making process. We didn't meander out of the pandemic; we catapulted out of the pandemic with momentum, and I think our enrollment and budget numbers all reflected that.”
The challenges that higher education faces currently demonstrate that, to Pribbenow, 鶹Լ must also stick to its mission and make every student feel welcome.
“It starts with the mission. If our mission is to educate students through the integration of experience, theory, and practice, to go out and make the world a better place, then to me, the way we do that is to create an environment on campus where any of the students that we recruit to 鶹Լ feel like they belong here and that they can succeed,” he said. “That is the starting point for institutional vitality and growth. I know we're all human, and so we fall short, and where we fall short, we must demonstrate humility and continue to strive to meet the needs of our students and help them with their goals of earning a degree and transforming their lives and the lives of others.”
Joining Pribbenow at the Presidential House at No. 4 鶹Լ Place is his wife, Dr. Kris Mickelson. Mickelson is a Professor of Education at Morningside University (Sioux City, Iowa), where she holds a remote faculty appointment, and the couple has six adult children. Together, they enjoy the outdoors, hiking, the arts, traveling, and have plans to start an employee book club in the fall. Another member of the Pribbenow family who will be seen around campus is their family dog, Marlin, a Tibetan Terrier.
“I think one of the roles of the President, in addition to acknowledging the truth of situations and the courage that it will take to move forward, is also to point out that this work should be joyful,” Pribbenow said. “There are things to be excited about, hopeful about. That's not to be overly optimistic or to ignore the hurdles, but it's to say that it can be both. We realize that there's hard work for us to do, but we're going to do it together and seek the joy in our shared work.”
