Senior Officer, Academic Administration

University of Ottawa•Ottawa, ON

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Reporting to the Senior Advisor, Program Management, this role serves as a first point of contact for students, managing various student requests to ensure above-average client service and support student retention rates in all programs of study. The position involves executing administrative tasks such as evaluating requests, making recommendations, approving certain requests, and providing follow-ups with students, colleagues, and other faculties. As an ambassador for the University and the Faculty, the incumbent will attend graduation ceremonies and various events to promote the University of Ottawa and the Faculty’s services.

Requirements

Knowledge of administration usually acquired through postsecondary studies and several years of experience in a similar role.
Knowledge of academic programs at the high school, college, undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Knowledge of and experience interpreting, communicating and applying procedures, policies and methods.
Experience researching and analyzing data as well as creating administrative and statistical reports.
Experience in problem solving and decision-making.
Experience providing client service.
Experience implementing strategies and activity plans for students.
Experience with Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Access), word processing, Windows and Internet.
Capacity to deal with conflicting priorities and respect strict deadlines in a fast-paced environment.
Organizational and analytical skills, excellent judgment and attention to detail.
Listening skills and strong work ethics.
Bilingual – French and English (spoken and written).

Nice To Haves

Planning: Organize in time a series of actions or events in order to realize an objective or a project. Plan and organize own work and priorities in regular daily activities.
Initiative: Demonstrate creativity and initiative to suggest improvements and encourage positive results. Is proactive and self-starting. Show availability and willingness to go above and beyond whenever it is possible.
Client Service Orientation: Help or serve others to meet their needs. This implies anticipating and identifying the needs of internal and external clients and finding solutions on how to meet them.
Teamwork and Cooperation: Cooperate and work well with other members of the team to reach common goal(s). Accept and give constructive feedback. Able to adjust own behaviour to reach the goals of the team.

Responsibilities

Assess student needs by analyzing, identifying, interpreting and translating student needs to determine which policies and procedures need to be activated.
Support the planning process for student interventions by providing a diagnosis and recommendations to address student issues.
Assist to the implementation process by providing relevant information to inform the approach for each intervention.
Perform follow-ups for student files to facilitate meeting administrative and academic timelines.
Serve as a first point of contact for students by receiving and acknowledging student requests for course selection and registration.
Determine the eligibility of the request.
Approve course selection for first year students and special students and perform the necessary steps to finalize requests based on eligibility.
Coordinate the course selection process such as maintaining course sequences, ensuring the course schedule is available on SIS and reconciling enrolment limits (e.g., classroom capacity versus registration and demand rates) and necessary activities related to these enrolment limits.
Ascertain that follow-up actions are initiated within defined timelines to increase positive student experience.
Establish and maintain the list of courses available to students with special needs and distribute to relevant offices and individuals.