Terry W. Hartle, ACE’s senior vice president for Government Relations and Public Affairs, has announced that he will retire at the end of 2022, after nearly three decades of matchless service to ACE and the entire higher education community.
Terry W. Hartle
In emails to ACE staff and other higher education associations, ACE President Ted Mitchell noted that “there is no more passionate and effective advocate for higher education. This has been true since he first arrived at ACE from the Senate.”
Mitchell added that while Hartle might have wanted to step aside earlier, “as always, Terry put ACE first and led us through the most tumultuous period in the modern history of higher education.”
“During the pandemic, Terry and his team were instrumental in spearheading the work the higher education associations did together to ensure that roughly $78 billion in desperately needed COVID-relief funding was allocated by Congress to students and our institutions,” he said.
In 2021, Hartle and the ACE Government and Public Affairs team received the “Outstanding Service to Higher Education Award” from NASPA—Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education in recognition of their public policy advocacy on behalf of the entire higher education community, particularly in response to the crisis the pandemic has posed for institutions and students.
Prior to joining the council in 1993, Hartle served for six years as education staff director for the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, then chaired by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
Higher Ed Dive called Hartle “one of higher education’s most prolific policy voices.”
Inside Higher Ed noted that he has been a source for many journalists, appearing in that publication alone hundreds of times over the years.
Mitchell said that a national search will be launched immediately to find the individual best equipped to build upon Hartle’s considerable legacy and provide the higher education community with the knowledge and strategic expertise needed to navigate in a proactive manner the maze of federal higher education policy.