Program Officer, Campuswide Immersion

Organization Overview

As America approaches its 250th birthday, growing polarization threatens our national unity, democracy, and security. We can’t afford to wait—we must address this divisiveness now. To chart a peaceful path forward, we need citizens who are well-informed, productively engaged, and committed to democracy. Today’s 14-24-year-olds urgently need the civic knowledge and skills to solve the complex challenges our country faces. Yet, the institutions where they learn, work, and live are not fully equipped to provide them with the tools they need to become effective, collaborative citizens.

The mission of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars (“Citizens & Scholars”) is to cultivate talent, ideas, and networks that develop young people as effective, lifelong citizens. Our vision is a strong American democracy and a flourishing civil society where all people can thrive. We collaborate with leaders in higher education, business, and philanthropy to transform colleges, workplaces, and communities into hubs for civic development. In each of these spaces, we develop and implement programs that equip young people with the civic skills needed to address the divisive issues facing our country. Our offerings include co-designed programs, digital products, convenings, trainings, fellowships, and coalition networks – all with clear success metrics to measure real progress.

For the past 80 years, Citizens & Scholars has prepared leaders and engaged networks of people and organizations to meet urgent education challenges, helping to shape an informed, productively engaged, and committed citizenry. Formerly the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, we have forged stronger connections between K–12 and higher education and provided early funding for the work of 16 Nobel Laureates, 21 Pulitzer Prize winners, 27 Presidential and National Medalists, 44 MacArthur “Genius Grant” recipients, and more than 100 college presidents.

Today, under the leadership of its President, Rajiv Vinnakota, Citizens & Scholars is uniting the organization's legacy with a commitment to launch new civic learning ventures in and beyond education, building unlikely alliances to reimagine and recenter citizen development for young people.

Position Overview

The Campuswide Immersion Program Officer will play an integral role in supporting the program director and the rest of the CWI Team, as well as the growing number of institutions that rely on CWI structure and support to diversify, strengthen, and evaluate their programming.

Campuswide Immersion (CWI) is a first-of-its-kind initiative created through College Presidents for Civic Preparedness. Its mission is to create campus cultures where every student, not only those who choose to participate, feels empowered to engage in civil discourse, navigate information critically, and collaborate to solve shared challenges. Grounded in a shared theory of change, CWI partners with a campus-defined Action Council of faculty, staff and students to embed civic learning across the campus. Together, they cultivate the motivation, skills and social permission students need to navigate differences and lead with civic fluency. Through this work, colleges and universities strengthen democratic values and prepare the next generation of informed, engaged citizens.

Reporting to the Program Director, this individual will be a trusted and essential colleague on the CWI team with strong knowledge of the program and its activities and the ability to communicate clearly and effectively with faculty and students. The ideal candidate will possess excellent interpersonal and communication skills, as well as the ability to interact successfully across the organization’s team and projects with a wide variety of stakeholders, helping to nurture some of Citizens & Scholars’ most important relationships.

This role, like all roles at Citizens & Scholars, is based out of our Princeton, NJ headquarters, and will require occasional visits to the Princeton office. However, most time will be spent working remotely, and the ideal candidate will be a self-starter who is comfortable working in a remote work environment.

Essence of the Position

• Assist with relational and program management for Campuswide Immersion (CWI), an initiative engaging 40+ institutions in creating campus cultures that support civic engagement, learning, and development.
• Manage, track, and update progress of CWI institutions through a comprehensive dashboard.
• Serve as the program lead in developing recommendations for institutions to integrate their interventions into a comprehensive package of curricular and co-curricular activities.
• Ideally, combine these elements of the role with a background in information literacy, particularly as it relates to civic engagement and development.

Primary Focus

• Manage, track, and update institutional progress via a dashboard through CWI and relationships with participating Action Council members, including identifying opportunities to showcase examples from participating institutions.
• Serve as a strategic thought partner to the Program Director to refine and strategize long-term and sustainable CWI Program Management.
• Provide specific and customized feedback to all CWI campuses on plans to integrate information literacy and other aspects of civic learning across the institution based on Action Plans, institutional capacity, and assessed metrics.
• In coordination with the Senior Program Officer for Assessment and Evaluation, develop information literacy, collaborative problem-solving, and civil discourse assessments for participating institutions.
• Contribute to and develop case studies that explore and explain how institutions create capacity for efforts in civil discourse, navigating reliable information, and collaborative problem-solving.
• Provide guidance on integrating civil discourse, information literacy, collaborative problem-solving, as they relate to civic development, into curricular and co-curricular activities.
  • Background in identifying mis/disinformation resources and integrating information literacy will be a particular strength for highly competitive candidates.
• Share research and best practices via national and regional conferences and through electronic repositories.
• Contribute to all virtual sessions, institutional calls, and connections to all CWI campuses.
• Coordinate with other C&S organizational teams (Faculty Institute, CP2, etc.).
• In coordination with the Program Director, build relationships with partner organizations in the civic learning field as part of a larger engagement strategy to leverage their assets and resources to benefit schools in CWI.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree or equivalent work experience required
• 5+ years of non-profit program/project support or university administration experience.
• Previous experience working directly with campus leaders in higher education.
• 5-7 years of work in the information literacy or library science sphere is a plus, as is knowledge of how AI is being used within higher education and information literacy spaces.
• Excellent skills in writing and interpersonal communication.
• High attention to detail.
• Excellent organizational skills.
• Demonstrated ability and willingness to work well with people with diverse perspectives and experiences.
• Proficiency with various social media; Facebook, LinkedIn etc.
• Proficiency in MS Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook); knowledge of Airtable a plus.
• Willingness to travel to convenings.
• Remote work
• Authorization to work in the United States

Attributes

• You thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment with a team who thinks big and is always iterating on projects until we complete them.
• You are entrepreneurial and a self-starter: you are eager to start and manage new projects, always thinking about ways to increase impact and scale; you don’t need to be told what to do, and you will manage up and ask questions to mine for clarity throughout the process.
• You pay close attention to detail, have good systems for tracking details, and are especially sensitive to how details and nuances affect relationships with partners.
• You are an excellent communicator – written and oral - and can persuasively capture where we currently are and where we can go together; you keep stakeholders informed, invested, and excited to be a part of the team.
• You are eager to learn and grow alongside your colleagues, working to build strong, trusting relationships in which you are committed to excellence in your work that is directly tied to impact in the field.

Our Core Values

• We are constantly learning and improving. We test and refine new ideas and learn from our mistakes. We dare to question old solutions. We seek opportunities to collaborate with our diverse team; different backgrounds, skill sets, and thinking styles give us valuable new perspectives. We share knowledge and insights with each other to help us grow as individuals and as an organization.
• We value diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging for all. We believe that we are stronger for our differences, and we acknowledge, respect, and appreciate them. We actively work with and learn from everyone—across all demographics, backgrounds, ideologies, and geographies. We identify areas where we differ and, for the good of the organization and each other, we explore and engage with differing perspectives.
• We are gracious and grateful in all that we do. We invest in our relationships with warmth and a sense of humor. We express gratitude to all our colleagues and stakeholders. While we strive for excellence, we recognize that no one is perfect. We give others the benefit of the doubt and act with kindness and integrity.
• We are attentive and intentional. We are aware of the needs of the world and those around us so that our work has a real impact. Our work is mission-driven and we know the “whys”—both large and small—behind what we do. Recognizing that details matter, we are equally committed to quality.

C&S offers a generous benefits package.