Senior Manager, College & Career Success

DESCRIPTION OF THE POSITION

Are you a strategic leader with a passion for empowering underserved students in STEM? As our Senior Manager, College and Career Success, you'll lead a pivotal function at BEAM, directly impacting the lives of 100+ low income, underserved students as they navigate their college and pre-professional opportunities with a focus on ensuring they succeed in college and transition to high quality, entry-level STEM career placements.

This role is a key hire for BEAM. We have been providing college support for years, and now thanks to insights from our alumni, we are ready to take our college success and STEM career readiness work to the next level. The upcoming phase of work is an evolution from highly individualized guidance to a comprehensive set of services designed to increase accountability and executive functioning, enabling young adults to effectively use campus resources and, with BEAM's help, find additional support if campus gaps exist. The work also focuses on scaleable steps to support students in preparing to access STEM opportunities (networking, internships, early career opportunities, and more). You will be building on program plans developed to benefit your role, but with built in flexibility to adjust plans in service of clear programmatic goals and outcomes, identifying what to expand and what to streamline. The ideal hire is someone with strong design experience, past experience working on college success services, and a deep knowledge of STEM majors, pathways and/or careers.

DESCRIPTION OF THE TEAM/DEPARTMENT

The team (Senior Manager, College and Career Success and a College Success Coordinator) will work together to propel BEAM students toward their college and career aspirations. We achieve this through a blend of group coaching, designing impactful college success curricula, and offering individual student advising as needed. The team directly guides up to 100 first-year students through the critical transition to college phase, supporting them as they execute their personalized college transition case plans, which serve two purposes: first, the case plans help students access the necessary on campus resources and services, through which they can create their own robust system of support. Second, the case plans prepare students with the tools and clear vision necessary to navigate STEM career opportunities and networking during and beyond college. Once students have completed their case plans, students are eligible for rewards from BEAM to support key next steps toward their career. The team is also available to take meetings with upperclassmen who need reminders of how and where to get resources on and beyond their college campus.

BEAM has been serving students since 2011 and has admitted a total of 1100 students to our program. Across the first five BEAM cohorts of college graduates, at least 70% of conferred undergraduate degrees have been STEM-related. Today, BEAM currently serves up to 400 students in college at any one time.

SUPERVISION

Senior Director, Program Design

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Program Design and Management (60%)

• Conduct program design cycles to manage design, build, launch, and reflect phases of college success work
• Identify and create resources that address the unique interests of BEAM students, design workshops and career events tailored to BEAM students, and provide advising in both individual and group appointments
• Develop and maintain accurate and up to date data trackers for alumni, identifying factors that would impact a student’s persistence and timely graduation
• Collaborate with BEAM local program team to conduct presentations and workshops on various topics related to college and career success to pre-college students
• Consult with BEAM local program team to understand students’ experiences earlier in the program
• Prepare and evaluate quantitative data and narrative reports to be used for decision-making and program improvement

Team Leadership (20%)

• Set annual plans for the College Success team in line with programmatic annual goals
• Provide direct supervision of College Success Coordinator:
  • Hold staff accountable for their assigned responsibilities and goals
  • Utilize systems for managing staff performance and fostering a positive team culture
  • Provide staff with ongoing feedback and professional development opportunities.
  • Train and manage the team on the process and expectations for enrolling and retaining students in our college
• Support overall team workload management
• Share program impact and students successes with key stakeholders and BEAM staff

Direct Student Support (10%)

• Meet with college students as requested, including:
  • First year students requesting support on case plans
  • Students beyond the first year seeking advice on where to go for more information in making informed choices relative to career/major choice, job search strategies, and graduate school planning.
• Support them in identifying next steps as challenges arise
• Use the perspectives from these meetings to inform overall program design and implementation

Other Duties (10%)

• General programmatic support of BEAM’s local programs office, which may include (but is not limited to) sourcing BEAM alumni to volunteer for younger student events, chaperoning field trips, attending fundraising events
• Other programmatic duties as assigned

QUALIFICATIONS

We understand that there are many paths to acquiring experience and therefore welcome candidates from diverse and nontraditional backgrounds for this role who have demonstrated equivalent transferable skills to carry out the major duties outlined in this job description.

Knowledge

• STEM knowledge, via a degree and/or coursework in a STEM field or professional experience at a STEM organization
• Knowledge of the higher education landscape(s) within NY and/or CA
• Knowledge of college scholarship and/or cohort program providers (e.g., Questbridge, Posse, Stony Brook Simons STEM Scholars Program)
• Knowledge of STEM-based summer internship programs and/or work entry programs
• Knowledge of entry-level STEM career pathways
• Knowledge of Los Angeles and/or New York City nonprofit and/or educational environments

Skills and Abilities

• Proven ability to design, implement, and evaluate experiential learning initiatives tailored to STEM students
• Demonstrated success in building and managing partnerships with diverse stakeholders, including students, faculty, industry, and alumni
• Professional experience working with low-income communities
• Experience in supporting college students, ideally via higher ed advising, workshop design, and/or career services
• Experience building strong relationships with students, families and other partners by presenting a positive, inspiring, and growth-oriented message
• Communicates clearly and collaborates authentically with families and students
• Organized and detailed oriented in both planning and implementation of programs
• Data driven planner focused on goals and prioritizing the work that drives impact
• Solutions-oriented problem solver who can quickly identify and address challenges

Significant Pluses include

• 5+ years of professional work experience
• Bachelor's degree
• Demonstrated commitment to developing and implementing programs designed to ensure equitable access to STEM learning and fields
• Past managerial experience
• Experience using a database for documentation and reporting (Salesforce preferred)
• Experience creating courses and/or learning modules via a LMS
• Experience with managing communications at scale
• Experience with an email communication platform (eg. Mailchimp or others)
• Knowledge of basic HTML/CSS
• Experience with networking and networking platforms, including Linkedin
• A strong connection to the “why” of our work for both you and the team you will lead