Director, American Indian Student Support Services

Job Profile:
Administrative Operations Manager 2
Job Family:
Administrative Operations
Time Type:
Full time
Apply before 11:59 PM Arizona time the day before the posted End Date.
Minimum Qualifications:
Bachelor's degree and five (5) years of experience appropriate to the area of assignment/field including two (2) years managerial experience; OR, Any equivalent combination of experience and/or training from which comparable knowledge, skills and abilities have been achieved.
Job Description:
Salary: $75,000 - $95,000 per year; offer dependent upon experience
The Director of American Indian Student Support Services provides strategic and administrative leadership for AISSS, the unit that supports, promotes, and assists American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and other Indigenous students in becoming academically and personally successful at ASU. The Director leads the unit's work across coaching and case management, peer support, cultural programming, community building, and unit operations at the Downtown Phoenix, Polytechnic, Tempe, and West campuses. The Director serves as the primary point of accountability for aligning these functions with the unit's mission and with college and institutional priorities while fostering a collaborative, student-centered, culturally appropriate, and evidence-informed approach to the work.
The aim of the unit's work is human flourishing: students who belong, who are well, and who graduate with a clear sense of where they are headed. The Director leads AISSS to bring life design practice into its coaching and case management, helping each student design a path through the university and beyond that recognizes who they are and where they come from, and to cultivate and measure belonging and wellbeing alongside persistence and graduation.
The Director is accountable for the performance of AISSS and leads the team that delivers it: the use of its services by Indigenous students, the satisfaction of students with those services, the satisfaction and engagement of the people who work in the unit, and the persistence and graduation of the students it serves. The Director reports to the Dean of University College, who sets the strategic direction for the unit and holds budgetary authority for it. The Director determines how the work gets done: sequencing, staffing, resource deployment within the approved budget, process design, and day-to-day problem resolution. The Director is also expected to operate at the level of strategy while staying close enough to the data and the staff to know where things stand at any moment, to bring forward well-formed proposals for how the unit's services should evolve, and to see through the decisions that follow.
Efficient management of the unit and the care of the people who work in it are core leadership responsibilities of this role. The Director builds and keeps a professional team in which each staff member knows what is expected, has what the job requires, is developed, and is recognized. The Director runs the unit with documented processes, clear workloads, and timely decisions, so that staff can spend their time with students.
The Director of American Indian Student Support Services also plays a critical role in supporting the development of student employees in the unit, including Seciwa Assistants, through Work+. Work+ is ASU's commitment to ensuring that student employment is an integrated working and learning experience; it is driven by the ASU Charter and designed to improve student success. The Director holds responsibility for ensuring that staff who supervise student employees in the unit practice supervision in alignment with the Work+ framework, including completing supervisor training, coaching students consistently, completing all required University College Work+ evaluations and assessments, and using Work+ tools and resources. The Director builds a team culture that treats student employee supervision as skilled, valued work, so that every student employee in the unit receives a consistent, high-quality Work+ experience.
Strategic Leadership and Direction
Establish, with the Dean, annual goals and measures of success for the unit and ensure appropriate mechanisms are in place to monitor implementation, evaluate outcomes, and inform continuous improvement.
Use analytics to design campaigns that improve outcomes for Native students, meaning coordinated, time-bound outreach and support efforts aimed at a defined group of students. Identify, from enrollment, engagement, academic progress, and persistence data, the students and the moments where the unit's intervention matters most; design outreach and support campaigns in response; run them through the Student Success Coordinators; and evaluate each campaign against the measures set when it was launched.
Identify initiatives that respond to emerging institutional priorities and student needs and bring them to the Dean as well-formed proposals. Lead those that are approved.
Participate in University College and ASU initiatives as directed by the Dean, bringing the unit's expertise to college-wide and university-wide work on student success, belonging, and wellbeing.
Serve as a member of the University College leadership team, contributing to college-wide goals, strategic initiatives, and priorities as directed by the Dean.
Student Success and Community Leadership
Lead the unit's coaching and case management model, including proactive case management for first-time, full-time Indigenous students, the Care Coach model for Student Success Coordinators, and peer coaching through Seciwa Assistants, ensuring an integrated approach to transition, academic progress, engagement, persistence, and graduation.
Integrate human flourishing and life design principles into the unit's coaching, case management, and programming, so that students are supported in designing a life and a path through the university that fit their identities, communities, and aspirations, and so that belonging and wellbeing are planned for and measured alongside academic progress.
Oversee cultural programming and community building across the four campus sites, identifying appropriate programs and facilitators with students and community partners, so that programming nurtures cultural identity, a sense of belonging, self-care, and academic success, with a calendar of cultural events planned each year.
Ensure that incoming Indigenous students know about AISSS, its services, and how to use them, working with orientation, advising, and academic partners so that students connect with the unit early.
Systematically collect and act on student feedback, and engage students in identifying challenges and offering solutions.
Advocate for Indigenous students across the university, and do so in a way that builds their independence and agency, so that students learn to navigate the institution and speak for themselves.
Provide leadership for innovation in the student experience in AISSS, and across University College in partnership with other units as the Dean assigns, advancing evidence-informed approaches to coaching, case management, peer support, and student engagement.
Operations and Organizational Effectiveness
Directly manage the Student Success Coordinators and hold each accountable for the results of responsibilities under their oversight. Lead and oversee the recruitment, hiring, onboarding, development, and evaluation of staff, ensuring effective personnel management and alignment with unit and college priorities, following University College hiring practices.
Take care of the people who work in the unit. Set clear expectations, hold regular one-on-one meetings, manage workloads across the sites, provide professional development, recognize good work, address concerns promptly, and act on what staff raise.
Manage the unit's budget within the allocation set by the Dean, in partnership with University College fiscal leadership, ensuring budget and resource allocations align with strategic priorities and operational needs. Prepare annual budget proposals and requests for additional investment, with the service use and outcome data that justify them.
Run the unit efficiently. Establish standard, documented processes for case management, service delivery, event planning, communications, and reporting, applied consistently across the four sites and reviewed each year.
Establish expectations for the use of data, assessment, and student outcomes, including trends in service use, engagement, persistence, and academic progress, to evaluate effectiveness, identify opportunities for improvement, and inform programmatic and resource decisions.
Oversee the unit's communications, including its website, newsletters, social media, and outreach to students and the community.
Institutional and Community Partnerships
Work in close collaboration with the Vice President and Special Advisor to the President on American Indian Affairs and the Office of Tribal Nations Advancement and Indigenous Futures, with the Labrio

Skills
Onboarding