Chapman University spent seven months searching the nation for an innovative, collaborative and passionate leader that would take the private college to a higher road — but not a new road.
It turns out, they didn’t have to look too far.
Last week, the university named Executive Vice President and Chief Advancement Officer Matt Parlow as Chapman’s 14th president, effective Sept. 2, 2025.
Parlow will succeed current president Daniele Struppa, who announced in May his plans to retire and return to the mathematics faculty.
The appointment is a “dream come true” for Parlow.
“It’s a community I care deeply about,” Parlow told the Business Journal. “I believe in our mission so much and I think there’s really exciting times ahead for us.”
This year marks Parlow’s 12th year at Chapman, where he has established a proven track record of success raising funds for the school. He has led the school’s $500 million Inspire campaign.
Inspire aims to more than double Chapman’s prior fundraising record of $200 million, which will go toward academic research programs, student scholarships and on-campus renovations and expansions.
The campaign, publicly launched in 2023, has raised more than $400 million to date and is on track to exceed its goal by 2028, according to Parlow.
“Matt has forged strong connections with business, civic and community leaders, creating opportunities that benefit students, faculty and programs,” Parker Kennedy, chairman of the Board of Trustees, said in a statement.
“These efforts reinforce the Chapman Family’s close-knit community and collective mission, which continue to inspire his deep commitment to the university.”
Prior to becoming executive vice president and chief advancement officer in 2021, Parlow was the former dean of the Fowler School of Law.
Finding the Right Candidate
Parlow said he got to see the role of president “up close and personal” while working alongside Struppa for the last three years in executive leadership.
“After seeing what a president could do to really move an institution forward, I thought this was something I wanted to do,” Parlow said.
Parlow was chosen from 90 applicants.
Finalists were chosen to go through multiple rounds of interviews and two days of intensive on-campus interviews.
Kennedy appointed a formal search committee that was led by Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees Jim Mazzo throughout the summer and the fall.
Mazzo, a top business executive in OC’s ophthalmology industry and executive chairman of retinal implant company Neurotech Pharmaceuticals Inc., said the search team sought someone who will accelerate Chapman’s “track record of achievement.”
“Chapman University has earned exceptional and transformational success over the last several decades, and we need a leader who will continue to advance its impressive track record of achievement,” he said in a statement.
“We are looking for the next president to take us to a higher road but not a new road. Matt will take us there and accelerate our progress even further.”
Parlow first taught law as a professor at Chapman from 2005 to 2008. He then left and served as professor and associate dean for academic affairs at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for eight total years.
When he returned to Chapman in 2016 to be dean of the law school, it was a “nice full circle moment” for him, Parlow said.
“To rejoin a faculty where I had started out and to lead that community really helped form the basis for my academic career,” Parlow said.
He earned his undergraduate degree in history from Loyola Marymount University and his J.D. from Yale Law School. During college, Parlow said law really resonated with him.
“I realized that for change to happen, for a better world to happen, the legal system is essential, and law helps create change,” Parlow said.
Parlow credits one of his law professors at Yale for suggesting that he consider teaching law, which has led him to where he is now.
Early in his career, Parlow got the opportunity to clerk for the late Judge Pamela Ann Rymer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Rymer was 70 when she passed in 2012.
Parlow described Rymer as one of the hardest workers and sharpest people anyone could ever meet. He shared an anecdote about how she never had cases outstanding, or unresolved cases pending in court.
“Every judge had cases along the grid except her,” Parlow said. “She had zero.”
Her portrait still hangs in Parlow’s office.
Struppa’s Legacy
Parlow’s predecessor also sang high praises about him.
“I can’t imagine a leader more tailor-made than Matt Parlow to succeed me and lead Chapman into the future. Chapman is in excellent hands,” Struppa said in a statement.
While stepping down as president, Struppa’s legacy is being preserved on campus.
Chapman’s Board of Trustees voted in October to name a new research facility the Daniele C. Struppa Research Park in honor of Struppa’s achievements, including increasing enrollment to 10,000 students and more than doubling the school’s endowment to about $780 million.
Since last August, Chapman has been renovating the historic Lydia D. Killefer School that it purchased in 2020 to become the new home of the university’s Institute for Quantum Studies and Advanced Physics Laboratory.
Chapman said the renovation will preserve the Killefer School’s “historic essence” while adapting the interior for research, offices and meeting spaces.
The new quantum studies and advanced physics facility is expected to be completed by spring 2025 with a celebration to follow.
Chapman’s “Path to Greatness”
Last week, Chapman unveiled the new Alexander E. Hayden School of Real Estate that was funded by a $5 million gift from alumnus and vice chairman of CBRE Alex Hayden.
The new school will house Chapman’s MS in Real Estate program and other real estate courses.
It’s the third school in the last two years to open within the George L. Argyros College of Business and Economics, which received a $10 million gift from Julia and George Argyros last September to elevate the school to a college.
The school of real estate joins the recently opened Doy B. Henley School of Management and the Burra School of Accounting and Finance.
All of these recent additions support Chapman’s long-term goal of boosting the business college’s national ranking to the top 50. This year, it ranked No. 66 by U.S. News & World Report, jumping up 12 spots from the year prior.
Chapman is currently in the second year of its five-year strategic plan called “Our Path to Greatness.”
Our Path to Greatness is the university’s seventh iteration in its series of five-year strategic plans.
It aims to invest in academic excellence, expanding graduate health science programs, academic resources, campus renovations and completing the Inspire campaign.
So far, Chapman has completed the 52,000-square-feet Campus Center at Rinker and its multiyear, $12 million expansion of the Hilbert Museum of California Art.
This fall, it also opened Chapman Court, a student housing complex for incoming undergraduate and transfer students.
In response to potential changes to higher education once Donald Trump takes office in January, Parlow said Chapman will continue to do its best to support its students. The president-elect has promised to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and previously attempted to end the DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, during his first term.
“Higher ed has experienced changes every time there’s a new administration and this one will no doubt have changes,” Parlow said.
“We’re very student focused as an institution and care deeply about our students, and if there are issues coming out of D.C., whether from the administration, Congress or an agency who oversees part of the DOE, we will always do our best to support students and make sure they can continue their education.”
