Associate Director-Teaching and Academic Development

University of Texas at Austin

7d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Associate Director of Teaching and Academic Development in the Graduate School’s Office of Career and Life Design (OCLD) uniquely understands the centrality of pedagogical competencies, communication skills, and academic job preparation to the professional and career development of graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, and the importance of strategic partnerships across the university as fundamental for increasing access to competency-based training opportunities. Working collaboratively with graduate students, faculty and university staff, this position is responsible for overseeing and directly facilitating curriculum and programming focused on graduate student teaching and mentoring development, research communication, and academic job preparation. The successful candidate coordinates with faculty for teaching development needs and supervises a team of graduate assistants who also provide direct service to graduate students and postdocs and support overall programming needs.

Requirements

Doctoral Degree in education, communication, sociology, psychology, humanities or STEM fields.
8 or more years of work experience in progressively responsible roles, including work within doctoral programs, teaching or professional development centers.
5 or more years of direct teaching and advising experience at the college level.
Collaborative work experience, with experience conducting outreach or communication with key stakeholders.
Passion for working specifically with advanced degree students and scholars, with an advanced understanding of PhD and postdoctoral scholar professional development needs and the academic hiring landscape.
Strong presentation, teaching and facilitation skills to lead workshops, meetings and seminars with stakeholders at all levels of the university, external constituents and faculty.
Demonstrated understanding of curriculum design, facilitation and scalable content, leveraging evidence-based teaching and/or pedagogy using canvas or other learning platforms.
Program and project management experience.
Demonstrated experience advising graduate students on career and professional development topics and ability to train and develop advisors working with graduate students.
Willingness to fail and learn collaboratively with the team.
Entrepreneurial spirit and ability to thrive in a new and changing work environment.
Relevant education and experience may be substituted as appropriate.

Nice To Haves

Project and program leadership experience.
Background in instructional design, teaching or learning content creation and program delivery.
Supervisory experience, especially supervisory experience working with graduate students.
Contributions to the field of teaching and learning and advanced degree career and professional development.

Responsibilities

Collaborate with Faculty Affairs, Academic Affairs, The Graduate Writing Program, UT Libraries, The Office of Postdoctoral Affairs, academic departments, faculty, graduate student groups, postdoctoral scholars and alumni to design and facilitate the delivery of 3 main programs for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars: 1) Teaching and Learning preparation which includes mentorship, 2) Academic Job Preparation 3) Communication Skills, with a special focus on research communication skills.
This position collaborates closely with and provides training for the OCLD team on programming and advising related to academic career topics including but not limited to CV writing, teaching statements, teaching demos, academic interviewing, conference networking, cover letters, and negotiation for department-requested and campus-wide workshops.
This position is responsible for contributing to OCLD signature programs, taking a leading role in the Empower Your Pitch competition and developing communication, research storytelling and mentoring topics to help prepare students for public research communication opportunities.
This position is responsible for overseeing the development of resources that address these topics in a timely way, keeping a pulse on emerging needs in pedagogical training, academic job preparation and research communication. Methods of support could include the development of communities of practice, asynchronous curriculum and content, synchronous workshop and course delivery, and micro-credentialing.
This position will coordinate across UT Austin departments and programs to build and promote utilization of competency-based programming, source external speakers and virtual tools to scale impact.
Supervise a team of graduate assistants who support teaching and learning through individual and group consultations, content development and programming. This team of consultants will need to address emerging and distinct teaching and academic development needs to better support graduate professional skills development.
Assess graduate student needs and identify thematic gaps in service or content to develop a graduate consultant program that extends teaching and academic development support to the entire advanced degree community.
This position is also responsible for developing long-term, sustainable infrastructures, content and resource dissemination with the graduate school’s communication team to maximize graduate students and postdoc utilization of asynchronous content and direct services.
Lead the integration of evidence-based practices into program design for the OCLD team.
Provide professional development opportunities for staff, faculty, graduate students and postdocs seeking training for graduate student teaching and graduate skill development.
Working closely with the OCLD leadership team, design data collection and assessment processes that track utilization, satisfaction, learning outcomes and impact of services and amplify the impact of this work through written reports and presentations.
Advise and coach advanced degree students and scholars on teaching strategies, academic job application materials and research communication skill development.
Engage in opportunities that demonstrate unique expertise of doctoral professional and teaching development, advancing learning and development for the career ecosystem at UT Austin. Opportunities include participation in national, regional and local organizations, conducting research, publishing, grant writing and committee participation at the department, division and university level.