Academic Review Manager

Position Summary:

The Academic Review Manager will plan and conduct the activities of the Academic Review and Planning unit under the leadership of the Provost to assess and improve the current state, future trajectory, and likely challenges facing academic programs whose quality and reputation are vital to the University’s mission. The Academic Review Manager will provide critical operational and logistical support to the Programs and Divisions in the preparation of the self-study and review of the programs and the collection of data, information, and reports. The manager will conduct the site visits of the external committees and facilitate the subsequent meetings with the faculty and senior management. The Program Review will require the preparation and implementation of review guides and committee charters and templates, action plans, and final reports. The position will require staying current with the latest trends and approaches in academic assessment, foresight, and staff management.

Major Responsibilities:

The responsibilities of the Academic Review Manager include, but are not limited to, the following:

Manage the reviews of Programs and academic activities

• Produce and supply regular studies on academic activities as required by senior management.
• Ensure that a meaningful and thorough review is conducted for each academic program.
• Collaborate with key stakeholders to determine what data is needed, develop processes to obtain the data, and manage execution.
• Manage self‐study reports, recommendations, and implementation plans in a timely manner.
• Make sure that outcomes of the review are communicated to the senior management and Divisions.
• Ensure that outcomes of the review are linked to decision-making processes for academic program development, strategic planning, and budgetary processes.

Provide operations leadership for the Unit:

• Produce studies on academic achievements and strategic intelligence.
• Lead the Unit with arranging and facilitating site visits, external committees, workshops, and meetings, serving as the recorder for selected workshops and meetings, as needed.
• Support Unit team members to document and disseminate lessons learned and best practices.
• Manage staff performance, providing coaching, mentoring, and staff developmental needs.

Other Responsibilities

Perform other duties as assigned.

Competencies:

• Leadership and interpersonal skills.
• Broad understanding of academic activities and processes combined with high ethical standards.
• Familiarity with the current academic operation and evaluation practices.
• Demonstrated capacity to work as a team member and with various stakeholders, including senior management, faculty, business managers, and others. 
• Demonstrated abilities to use reporting tools (MS Excel, PowerBi, Tableau), word-processing (MS Word), databases (MS Access or SQL), and online bibliometric databases (Scival, Pure, Scopus, Web of Science).
• Demonstrated ability to prepare written and to give presentations in English.
• Knowledge and experience with management centered on results, including formulation of performance indicators, methods of collection, and quality control of data.
• Finance and Statistics background preferred.
• Experience in quantitative data collection, cleaning, processing, and data management preferred.
• Experience with managing a diverse group of stakeholders and balancing competing priorities.
• Highly organized, with an ability to manage multiple short- and long-term projects simultaneously.

Qualifications:

Academic degree, minimum master’s degree or equivalent, with 10-15 years of work experience in a professional environment with at least three years of line management experience and staff supervision. Prior sound experience in either an operational capacity as a project manager in Academia or research-related projects is a must. Relevant expertise includes general administrative and technical support experience, excellent attention to detail, and constant focus on data quality, logistic and data management, and office support. This experience must show that you can learn the skills needed to perform the duties of this position.

Desired Qualifications: 

Finance and budgeting experience especially in research or government funding agency is a plus. Committee and review panel management experience would be appreciated.