Educational Initiatives, Assistant Director (EXPIRED)

Notre Dame Research is committed to creating a community that fosters equity of experience and opportunity and ensures that members of all backgrounds feel safe, welcome, and included. We strive to achieve a culture of openness, autonomy, and belonging; making Notre Dame an exceptional place for our team, partners, and collaborators to flourish.

The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study seeks to hire a full-time Assistant Director for Educational Initiatives.

About the Institute:

The Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study is a university-wide research institute based in Notre Dame Research. The NDIAS promotes issue-engaged, inclusive, and interdisciplinary study of questions that affect our ability to lead valuable, meaningful lives. Each year, the NDIAS convenes a diverse group of faculty fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate scholars to participate in a residential research community, with topics organized by an annual theme.

Three features define the vision of the NDIAS:

• Issue-engaged: The Institute brings high-level scholarship about value and meaning into conversation with actual, timely research in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences.
• Inclusive: The Institute cultivates a community of researchers at all levels—from undergraduates to full professors—in a dialogue of unique and diverse perspectives and methods.
• Interdisciplinary: The Institute supports researchers from any discipline—including artists, scientists, social scientists and scholars in the humanities—and brings them into conversation with each other to advance individual projects and promote productive collaboration.

About the Opportunity:

This Assistant Director will be responsible for developing and directing five initiatives under the auspices of the Institute.

1. The Undergraduate Research Fellows (URF) Program: Recruiting, selecting and mentoring our group of undergraduate research assistants; designing and leading a weekly developmental seminar for the URF cohort; connecting the students with meaningful research apprenticeship opportunities within the Institute; advising independent research projects; identifying and evaluating best practices in educating undergraduates about research practices.
2. NDIAS Teaching Lab: Serving as the first point of contact for faculty funded by the NDIAS Teaching Lab program. Leading the institute recruitment outreach and managing the selection process for Teaching Lab fellows. Collaborating with key campus partners in learning design, media, and the colleges to help faculty design and implement their course during the period of the fellowship. Serving as key point-person for program evaluation and budgeting for the Teaching Lab, working closely with the Associate Director and Director.
3. Program Development: Collaborating with the Director, Associate Director and university partners to write and implement grants in support of educational initiatives associated with the Institute. This may periodically involve benchmarking travel.
4. The Distinguished PhD Fellows Program: Leading recruitment and selection for a competitive single year PhD fellowship program for Notre Dame students; assisting the Director in the implementation of a weekly research seminar program for the cohort; working with campus partners to align and implement best practices for professional development for PhD students; organizing events to build mentorship networks for each of the selected PhD Fellows.
5. Support of the Institute’s Academic Mission: The ADEI will be expected to attend faculty and PhD research seminars and assist, as needed, in supporting the seminars. Depending on the interests and qualifications of the applicant, there may be limited opportunities for the ADEI to conduct original research and collaborate with institute research programs.

We require a candidate with at least a bachelor’s degree in an academic discipline related to the Institute’s mission: humanities, social sciences, or science engaged with social issues.

We are seeking a professional with demonstrated passion for fostering research communities, skill at student mentorship, experience with creative and best-practice aligned course design, and potential to work collaboratively to design and implement interdisciplinary programs that transform student learning. This assistant director will be responsible for day-to-day program management for all of the undergraduate and PhD facing programs in a vibrant, highly active interdisciplinary research Institute. They will be a critical member of the Institute’s four-person staff, providing input and collaboration on other dimensions of the Institute’s strategy. They should be enthusiastic and adept ambassadors for the academic disciplines which form the core of our annual academic programming. We do expect the assistant director to work with our team to become skilled at this dimension of our Institute operations. The assistant director will be responsible for building out a highly effective network of campus partners and external advisors as we design our student programming. We have an outstanding team of faculty and staff in a quickly growing, relentlessly optimistic, and deeply collaborative university-wide research Institute. We want to hire into our core team someone who will advance the Institute’s ambitious goals to inspire and train the next generation of researchers.

We have some preference for a candidate with a doctoral degree in an academic discipline related to the Institute’s mission: humanities, social sciences, or science engaged with social issues. The assistant director will work closely with faculty across the university and faculty fellows; campus partners in student program design; and researchers in training. Our student research programs continue to rapidly grow and develop, and the Institute has prioritized fundraising and grant development for this work. While experience with program development or grant management is a plus, it is not required.