Jobs for People with MS: National MS Society

The Assistant Director of Life Design under the leadership of Dr. Farouk Dey, the inaugural vice provost for Integrative Learning and Life Design 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 Assistant Director, Life Design - Leadership, Engagement, and Experiential Development who will report to the Director of Life Design for Leadership Engagement and Experiential Development and will execute the Life Design Lab’s vision, strategy, and objectives to enhance and deliver the professional development, career advancement, and life design offerings with special attention to student leaders. As an equity-based office that believes all 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 students who are leaders within clubs and organizations.

The Life Design Educator will become familiar with the novel approach to career readiness and life design that has been established at Johns Hopkins University to implement programs, and scalable support systems, and create content to connect critical mindsets, frameworks, and approaches with their designated student population.

Furthermore, the Life Design Educator will work with Directors and Associate Directors within the SOAR 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.

Over the course of the year, the Life Design Lab offers both credit-bearing and non-credit-bearing coursework that is driven by our unique life design curriculum. The Life Design Educator will spend time serving as a teaching assistant and eventually a co-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 the planning and execution of programs that impact our entire student population throughout the year.

Specific Duties & Responsibilities

• Execute the strategy of 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.

• Customize offerings and approaches given the unique needs of students and alumni based on areas of 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.

• Support in the delivery of the 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 special attention to under-represented and first-generation and limited incoming communities.

• In partnership with Life Design Lab 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 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 in higher education.

Knowledge, Skills, & Abilities

• 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 (Blackboard, etc.)

• 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.

• Experience in presenting or facilitating in both in-person and online formats. Experience creating content (video, digital, written) and utilizing social media for the purposes of engaging and educating diverse audiences, and influencing 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.

Additional Information

• 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 skills in relationship development and engaging 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. For this transformation to work, traditional one-on-one counseling and coaching services are taking a backseat to a culture of scalable programs and interventions.

Minimum Qualifications

• Pursuing or completed a Master's Degree.

• Three (3) years of experience within a higher education, government, non-profit, or corporate setting.

• By way of experience, evidence of ability to develop and execute programs, courses, events, and content to scale impact across various constituent groups.

Preferred Qualifications

Classified Title: IL & LD Officer

Job Posting Title (Working Title): Assistant Director, Life Design - Leadership, Engagement and Experiential Development

Role/Level/Range: ACRP/04/MD

Starting Salary Range: $55,200 - $96,600 Annually (Commensurate with experience)

Employee group: Full Time

Schedule: Mon - Fri/ 8:30am -5pm

Exempt Status: Exempt

Location: Hybrid/Homewood Campus

Department name: ​​​​​​​Life Design Lab

Personnel area: University Student Services

Equal Opportunity Employer:

Johns Hopkins University is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, religion, age, sexual orientation, national or ethnic origin, disability, marital status, veteran status, or any other occupationally irrelevant criteria. The university promotes affirmative action for minorities, women, disabled persons, and veterans.