Associate Director of Life Design, Whiting School of Engineering Master's Students
Under the leadership of Dr. Farouk Dey, the inaugural vice provost for integrative learning and life design, Johns Hopkins University has developed an ambitious vision to continue to integrate life design, experiential learning, and mentoring in the academic and co-curricular learning experience for all students and postdoctoral fellows.
We are seeking an Associate Director of Life Design, Whiting School of Engineering Master's Students who will report to the Director of the Life Design for Graduate Programming with a dual reporting line to the Whiting School of Engineering’s Assistant Dean for Engineering Student Affairs nested in the Office of Graduate Education and Lifelong Learning and will execute on the Life Design Lab’s vision, strategy, and objectives to enhance and deliver the professional development, career advancement, and life design offerings for graduate students in the Whiting School of Engineering. As an equity-based office that believes all of our students have the same opportunity to pursue their life purpose regardless of background, field of study, or social capital, each Life Design Educator is expected to co-create, collaborate, and support all of our students; however, this position has a particular focus on the master’s student population within the School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins which includes around 1300 residential master’s students and over 6000 remote/online professional master’s and graduate certificate students
The Life Design Educator will become familiar with the novel approach to career readiness and life design established at Johns Hopkins University and implement programs, scalable support systems and create content to connect critical mindsets, frameworks, and approaches with their designated student population. There will be an emphasis on scalable solutions to support our residential and virtual graduate students pursuing a master’s degree within the WSE (Whiting School of Engineering).
Furthermore, the Life Design Educator will work with Directors and Associate Directors within the Life Design Graduate Programming team to continue working with key partner stakeholders that include departmental leadership, faculty, campus partners, community partners, alumni, and employers. Maintaining critical and established relationships will be imperative to the Life Design Educator’s success.
The Life Design Lab offers credit-bearing and non-credit-bearing courses driven by our unique life design curriculum. The Life Design Educator will serve as an assistant or primary facilitator for the formalized curriculum for our student population.
The Life Design Lab’s efforts are also driven by initiative-based programs that span the academic calendar. Life Design Educators are expected to actively participate in planning and executing programs that impact our entire graduate student population throughout the year.
Specific Duties & Responsibilities
- Execute on integrating life design, alumni connections, employer engagement, experiential learning, and mentoring into the academic and co-curricular learning experience for students and alumni, with special attention paid to a prescribed portfolio of students and industries relevant to Whiting School of Engineering masters students.
- Customize offerings and approaches given unique needs of students and alumni based on identity and values, academic pursuits and professional interests.
- Using the mindsets and methodologies of life design and best practices from the Life Design Lab, deliver workshops, programs, content, and digital resources to help students and alumni achieve their life ambitions.
- Develop scalable asynchronous and on-demand content to deliver career readiness best practices at scale to students pursuing graduate education.
- Design and implement workshops to support our engineering graduate students' career readiness and life design needs at scale, grounded in current best practices and emerging trends.
- Support in the delivery of Life Design curriculum to students via official life design offerings (the Life Design Summer Institute, intersession or department sponsored courses).
- Partner with faculty, alumni, and employers to increase mentoring, experiential learning, and career opportunities for students and alumni.
- Serve in a supporting role for the execution of signature annual offerings.
- Serve as a point of contact for industry employers by identifying, promoting, and supporting established recruitment opportunities on campus.
- Scale efforts for a positive life design and professional development experience for all students and alumni, with focused attention to Whiting School of Engineering graduate students.
- In partnership with Life Design Lab and Whiting School Graduate Education leadership, cultivate and strengthen relationships with colleagues across units, including, but not limited to, academic departments, academic advising, life design lab, alumni relations, and international services.
- Collaborating with Life Design Lab staff and the WSE corporate engagement team as appropriate to build and maintain a network of employers and mentors across varied careers who can attend courses, programs, and networking events.
- Engage in social media, digital outlets, and academic and professional journals and associations to establish an exciting brand, tell the story, and serve as a thought leader at Johns Hopkins University and higher education.
- Other Duties as Assigned.
The Ideal Candidate
- The ideal candidate is comfortable with co-working and flexible work arrangements. Our educators work within multiple offices and spaces on campus. Rather than assigning office or desk spaces to our teams, we have modernized our approach and assigned laptops and cell phones and expect that our teams can work from anywhere to scale our impact across the institution. For this model to work, the ideal candidate must present excellent relationship development skills and engage audiences in groups and via social media and digital outlets.
- The ideal candidate is entrepreneurial, data and outcomes-driven, strong in planning and execution, comfortable leading programs and interventions with groups, and enjoys developing relationships and connections with multiple stakeholders at once. Our new vision is focused on the scalability of resources and services and does not utilize a one-on-one appointment model. Traditional one-on-one counseling and coaching services are taking a backseat to a culture of scalable programs and interventions for this transformation to work.
- By way of experience, evidence of ability to take the initiative, and develop and execute programs, courses, events, and content to scale impact across various constituent groups.
- Ability to work independently and as part of a team to achieve individual and shared goals within a complex and decentralized institution.
- Strong multicultural competency and demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with diverse stakeholders to achieve equitable and inclusive results.
- Comfortable with technology and able to quickly learn and use a wide range of systems (Handshake, Salesforce, PeopleGrove), collaboration tools (Zoom, Teams, Miro, Monday), and instructional technologies (Canvas.)
- Listen and communicate convincingly in written and verbal formats.
- Knowledge of highly selective college or university settings, and familiarity with operations of the world of work and university networks; ideally within STEM disciplines
- Experience in presenting or facilitating in both in-person and online formats.
- Experience creating content (video, digital, written) and utilizing social media to engage and educate diverse audiences and influence public opinion.
- Ability to translate student experiences to employment as evidenced by prior experience in either a government, non-profit, education, or private sector setting.
- Experience in developing and implementing effective assessment methods and articulating strategic priorities.
Minimum Qualifications
- Master's Degree required.
- Five years of experience within a higher education, government, non-profit, or corporate setting.
Classified Title: Sr. IL & LD Officer
Job Posting Title (Working Title): Associate Director of Life Design, Whiting School of Engineering Master's Students
Role/Level/Range: ACRP/04/ME
Starting Salary Range: $64,600 - $113,300 Annually ($85,000 targeted; Commensurate with experience)
Employee group: Full Time
Schedule: 5 Days; 37.5 per week
Exempt Status: Exempt
Location: Hybrid/Homewood Campus
Department name: Life Design Lab
Personnel area: University Student Services