With over 30 years of experience, Dr. Carla Stebbins has established herself as a successful leader in higher education. Her career spans staff and faculty roles, Program Director, Department Chair, and Associate Dean. She has managed both large and small programs, serving working professionals as well as new college graduates in classroom, online, and hybrid delivery formats and technologies.

Originally from the Midwest, Dr. Stebbins has led two long-standing health care management/leadership programs in the Midwest and Northeast from candidacy to full accreditation with the Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME). She currently resides in Southeast Texas where she is working with a long-standing CAHME accredited program serving a highly diverse faculty and students in two of the largest health care markets in the US.

She has been described by her constituents as a collaborative leader dedicated to student-centered, high impact, program design. She engages leaders in key health care positions along with academic leadership, the faculty, and students to build innovative programs that reflect the specific needs of the local and regional health care markets. Carla’s success is found in finding simple yet effective solutions to meet the growing demands on academic programs and the faculty that support them while protecting time dedicated to teaching, scholarship and service.

Carla is a self-professed “assessment geek” understanding how assessment tools can guide faculty and students toward program development, improvement and better student outcomes.

Dr. Stebbins achieved Certified Fellow status with CAHME in the spring of 2024 after serving as a Fellow Coordinator, Site Team Member and Site Visit Chair for US and international-based MHA programs. She also serves on CAHME’s Accreditation Council and recently led a workgroup in the review and revision of Criterion I of the Self-Study Handbook.

Carla confesses to having been a past skeptic of accreditation, initially concerned that the time, energy, and resources needed to satisfy all the requirements would distract the program from its work with students. Reflecting on the past decade’s work with CAHME, she is now very clear that the accreditation process has made her a more effective academic leader.  “In my experience, the CAHME process is integral to continuous program improvement, so vital to the interests of students, faculty and the healthcare industry.

Carla holds a BA in Marketing from the University of Northern Iowa, an MHA from Des Moines University, and a PhD in Higher Education & Policy Studies from Iowa State University. She is a Master Practitioner in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator and serves as a guest speaker for organizations across the country and currently serves as a faculty for the Health Team Works, Clinical Health Coach® program.

Dr. Stebbins offers her years of experience in a variety of program and college roles to advise programs that are:

• exploring accreditation.
• seeking initial accreditation or looking to strengthen their accreditation processes.
• searching out new programing opportunities or strengthening existing programs.
• looking to develop new systems and processes to engage program constituents in building truly great, results oriented, academic programs.