Executive Director, Lindy Center

Job Summary

The Executive Director is responsible for managing staff and strategy across both areas, creating a collaborative culture and ensuring there are creative, multiple civic pathways for student, faculty, and staff participation. Importantly, the Executive Director provides leadership for key strategic outcomes for the University as a whole: 1) expanding students’ civic identities and equipping them to marshal change toward a more just world; 2) creating a world-class support and development structure through which faculty can engage their scholarship in the community; and 3) aligning student and faculty involvement with Drexel’s community impact goals, local to global. Through all of this, the Executive Director also works to ensure that the Lindy Center’s work is based on truly democratic and respectful relationships with local residents and community organizations.

Essential Functions

Management and Administration

• Provide leadership for planning, directing, and evaluating departmental operations and programs.
• Manage a collaborative team (two Associate Directors, an Assistant Director, a Program Coordinator, a VISTA and student workers).
• Develop and monitor annual budget.
• Manage existing grants/gifts through the Lindy Center, including reporting and budgeting responsibilities. Pursue new public and private funding opportunities, as well as individual donor solicitations, to develop and sustain new initiatives.
• Collect and maintain data to track Lindy Center programs and collaborate with stakeholders on other University civic engagement initiatives for the purposes of reporting, research and pursuit of external awards.

Community Engaged Scholarship

• Engage academic departments to recruit, encourage, and assist faculty members in developing new community-engaged learning courses and incorporating community-engaged academic work into existing courses.
• Provide support and resources around equitable, anti-racist and justice-oriented community engaged scholarship to support faculty in responsibly partnering with communities.
• Ensure that community voices are centered in academic research and teaching.
• Allocate resources to faculty and students involved in community-engaged scholarship.
• Facilitate yearly one-on-one meetings with individual deans and college/school leadership to understand and inform the University’s civic and community engagement strategy from the perspective of individual schools and colleges.
• Maintain close relationships with the Office of Faculty Advancement, the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Office of Research and Innovation, and the Faculty Senate to ensure alignment with faculty development opportunities.
• Promote recognition of community-engaged scholarship among peer institutions through events, news articles, publications, presentations, and participation at conferences.
• Work closely with the Office of Global Engagement to deepen the alignment between civic and global engagement.
• Convene and staff the UCP faculty committee and develop other advisory structures to support civic engagement activities in the colleges and schools.
• Represent Drexel in consortia of colleges and universities with community-engaged scholarship programs.
• Ensure that community engaged scholarship at Drexel remains consistent with the state of the field through creative and collaborative use of resources.

Enhancing Student Experiences

• Align the Lindy Center’s growth trajectory with Drexel’s long-standing commitment to experiential education by identifying further opportunities for community-based co-op and volunteer placements.
• Ensure that opportunities for student learning and engagement are infused through all aspects of UCP’s (and Drexel more broadly) civic engagement work, including at the Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships.
• Support a campus-wide planning effort to review the current first-year civic engagement requirement and help develop greater integration of civic engagement study and activities with curricula across the University, working with schools/colleges in this effort.
• Ensure that the Lindy Center’s offerings for students align with the University’s student life cycle of recruitment, retention, persistence, and success by working closely with Enrollment Management and Student Success, Steinbright Career Development Center, Global Engagement, and other key student-facing offices.
• Support the development of student leaders in service and community engagement by leading staff in maintaining and creating new programming that is accessible to students at every point in their college experience.
• Ensure that the Lindy Center is a community-oriented and accessible place and space for all students, as well as faculty, staff and community partners.

Enhancing Student Experiences

• Align the Lindy Center’s growth trajectory with Drexel’s long-standing commitment to experiential education by identifying further opportunities for community-based co-op and volunteer placements.
• Ensure that opportunities for student learning and engagement are infused through all aspects of UCP’s (and Drexel more broadly) civic engagement work, including at the Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships.
• Support a campus-wide planning effort to review the current first-year civic engagement requirement and help develop greater integration of civic engagement study and activities with curricula across the University, working with schools/colleges in this effort.
• Ensure that the Lindy Center’s offerings for students align with the University’s student life cycle of recruitment, retention, persistence, and success by working closely with Enrollment Management and Student Success, Steinbright Career Development Center, Global Engagement, and other key student-facing offices.
• Support the development of student leaders in service and community engagement by leading staff in maintaining and creating new programming that is accessible to students at every point in their college experience.
• Ensure that the Lindy Center is a community-oriented and accessible place and space for all students, as well as faculty, staff and community partners.

UCP Leadership & Strategy

• As part of the UCP leadership team, facilitate connections for all aspects of the Drexel’s civic engagement mission to the core teaching, research, and clinical practice mission of the University, with a focus on coordinating and offering relevant support to the University community.
• Serve as a strategic thought leader and acts as a champion and advocate for the University’s commitment to educating engaged citizens in a diverse world and serving the public good.

Required Qualifications

• Minimum of a Master’s degree in a relevant field.
• Minimum of 10 years of full-time professional experience with both civic/community engagement work and work with undergraduate and graduate students.
• Minimum of 3 years of progressive management and leadership experience.
• Ability to lead and manage a complex office with internal and external-facing responsibilities.
• Demonstrated leadership along with substantive knowledge and passion for community-engaged scholarship, civic engagement, community partnerships, social change, and/or related areas.
• Ability to build just and equitable relationships with a broad range of stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff and community partners.
• Ability to cultivate trust and credibility with colleagues and to build positive and effective relationships
• Demonstrated sensitivity, knowledge, and skills for working with issues of power, privilege, identity, racial equity, and cultural humility.
• Advanced skills in written communications, public speaking, and group facilitation, including ability to communicate effectively with culturally, racially, and socioeconomically diverse constituencies, including non-academic audiences.
• Experience with curriculum development, partnership development, proposal writing, program design and implementation, and evaluation.

Preferred Qualifications

• PhD or doctoral-level degree in a humanities, law, education or relevant field.

Location

University City, Philadelphia PA

Additional Information

This position is classified as Exempt with a salary grade of N. For more information regarding Drexel’s Professional Staff salary structure, https://drexel.edu/hr/career/ducomp/salstructure/

Special Instructions to the Applicant

Please make sure you upload your CV/resume and cover letter when submitting your application.

Review of applicants will begin once a suitable candidate pool is identified.

Advertised:Jul 27 2022 Eastern Daylight Time
Applications close:Sep 27 2022 Eastern Daylight Time