Program Officer: Faculty Institute

As you review this position, you are encouraged to review and familiarize yourself with the Citizens & Scholars College Presidents for Civic Preparedness Faculty Institute work at the following link:

https://collegepresidents.org/offering/faculty-development-institute-on-dialogue-across-difference/

As the Program Officer for the Faculty Institute, you will work closely with the Senior Program Director at the center of the national conversation about civic learning, supporting young people to be better citizens and networking with civic leaders to ensure a resilient constitutional democracy.  

In an age of fracture and distrust, we must fundamentally rethink the ways we prepare young people with the knowledge, skills, dispositions, and capacities to be successful citizens in our democracy. By its very nature, civic learning must be cross-partisan work, designed to encourage understanding and trust. Collaboration will not always be easy, but it is the only way forward. To be successful, we must all set aside our personal agendas and build a new system of civic learning designed to produce citizens who are well-informed, productively engaged in working for the common good, and hopeful about our democracy. 

Your work will demand an exceptional display of civic skills and courage – you will build social trust and model the very skills and dispositions that we want others to emulate and teach. You will serve as a neutral arbiter. You will be facilitating collaboration amongst partners across the ideological spectrum to work towards city, state and national civic priorities in youth engagement, policy and advocacy, and testing and scaling revolutionary ideas. 

We are building cross-partisan coalitions -- with leaders from the business, education, academic and policy communities – centering how we build better citizens in our country. Of equal importance as our youth-led civic action program, to support this work, you will maintain a pulse on the best ideas, latest research, and who the emerging leaders in the field are, as well as develop your own opinions and assertions. Together, we will consider, try, sometimes fail fast, and try new ideas on again to build a collaborative, informed and inspired field around civic learning. This means our work in field building will span from growing strong, cross-partisan relationships, developing the narrative, understanding current research, piloting projects and measurement tools, and developing policy to support and sustain the field. 

The ideal candidate, guided by the Senior Program Director, will excel in engaging effectively with faculty and senior leadership and demonstrate strong communication and relationship management skills. They will help to implement three in-person faculty events and an ongoing virtual community and should have experience in program or project management within higher education or the non-profit sector. Proficiency in MS Office, social media, and a commitment to diversity and engaging across differences are also essential, alongside excellent organizational abilities and attention to detail.

About Us 

For the past 75 years, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars has prepared leaders and engaged networks of people and organizations to meet urgent education challenges, helping to shape an informed, productively engaged, and hopeful citizenry. We are now rebuilding how we develop citizens in our country in three distinct ways:  

• we support young people to be better citizens, 

• we network civic leaders to ensure a resilient democracy, and 

• we prepare a diverse and responsive next generation of college faculty and educators. 

To sustain a flourishing civil society, we bring groups together as a force for progress on the nation’s biggest education challenges. We bring a breadth and depth of experience in civic learning and civil society development. We also utilize a multi-disciplinary, cross-partisan, and cross-sector approach that harnesses data and technology to tackle the issues at scale since the most urgent and complex societal challenges cannot be solved by one field, party, or sector alone.

We work to create not just a better educated but a more just and inclusive America. We have long been a proponent of excellence in teaching by actively promoting more gender and racial diversity in American higher education, improving the quality of K–12 education in our country, strengthening STEM teaching in high-need schools, and improving understanding of American history and civics. And now we are dramatically expanding the scope of our work to focus on key determinants of a flourishing civil society. We are thinking beyond the high school Civics class, imagining a holistic approach to civic learning and practice. This will include both high-quality, engaging content and opportunities to practice civic skills and develop civic dispositions in classrooms and after school on the sports field, at summer camp, online, and at home.  

Primary Focus

• Ensure sound logistics and a well-designed in-person experience for participants.

• Create a robust agenda and participant planning for each event

• Organize and implement Faculty Institute virtual sessions (schedule and confirm all sessions, send out invitations and reminders, track participation, manage speaker honoraria where required).

• Manage and track relationships with participating faculty, including opportunities to showcase faculty participants’ work; identify instances where one-on-one engagement with the Senior Program Director is required. 

• Ensure that participating faculty fulfill the requirements to be eligible for stipends and coordinate payments with finance team.

• Assist with preparation of Faculty Institute materials (e.g., edition, proofreading, evaluation, dissemination).

• Perform other duties as assigned

Qualifications 

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience required

• 3-5 years of non-profit program/project support or university administration experience.

• Excellent skills in writing, interpersonal communication, and other kinds of communication.

• Demonstrated commitment to historically underrepresented groups a plus.

• Previous experience working directly with faculty members in higher education a plus.

• High attention to detail.

• Excellent organizational skills.

• Demonstrated ability and willingness to work well with people with diverse perspectives and experiences.

• Proficiency with various social media; Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

• Proficiency in MS Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook).

• Willingness to travel for a minimum of 3 convenings per year.

• Hybrid work from our Princeton, NJ headquarters

• Authorization to work in the United States

Attributes

• You are entrepreneurial and a self-starter: you are eager to start and manage new projects, always thinking about ways to increase impact and scale; you don’t need to be told what to do, and you will manage up and ask questions to mine for clarity throughout the process.

• You thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment with a team who thinks big and is always iterating on projects until we ship them.

• You are an excellent communicator – written and oral - and can persuasively capture where we currently are and where we can go together; you keep stakeholders informed, invested, and excited to be a part of the team.

• You are eager to learn and grow alongside your colleagues, working to build strong, trusting relationships in which you are committed to excellence in your work that is directly tied to impact in the field. 

Our Core Values 

• We are constantly learning and improving. We test and refine new ideas and learn from our mistakes. We dare to question old solutions. We seek opportunities to collaborate with our diverse team; different backgrounds, skill sets, and thinking styles give us valuable new perspectives. We share knowledge and insights with each other to help us grow as individuals and as an organization. 

• We are gracious and grateful in all that we do. We invest in our relationships with warmth and a sense of humor. We express gratitude to all our colleagues and stakeholders. While we strive for excellence, we recognize that no one is perfect. We give others the benefit of the doubt and act with kindness and integrity.

• We are attentive and intentional. We are aware of the needs of the world and those around us so that our work has a real impact. Our work is mission-driven and we know the “whys” – both large and small – behind what we do. Recognizing that details matter, we are equally committed to quality.