Director of the STEM Accelerator

George Mason University - Chantilly, VA

Full-time - Director

Hybrid - Chantilly, VA

Educational Services

About the position

The Director of the STEM Accelerator at George Mason University is responsible for leading innovative STEM education initiatives, mentoring students and faculty, and managing the Accelerator's programs and budgets. This role aims to enhance the quality of STEM education, improve student retention, and support faculty development within the College of Science.

Responsibilities

• Represents the Accelerator for both university initiatives and public-facing communications and leads workshops to address the evolving landscape of science education.
• Creates, designs, recruits, and implements faculty development workshops connecting to any and all areas of STEM Education, including such concepts as active learning, innovations in assessment, and inclusive pedagogy.
• Manages Accelerator meetings.
• Administers Accelerator grants by ensuring that tasks within the scope of effort are accomplished in a timely fashion and that expenditures are within budgeted allocations.
• Ensures that grant proposals contain necessary line items such as personnel, travel, conference costs, equipment, space renovations, equipment maintenance, etc.
• Manages Accelerator budget by ensuring that expenditures from Accelerator budgets are within the budgeted allocations.
• Reviews Accelerator budgets and expenditures with the College of Science.
• Pursues funding opportunities that will increase the capacity of the Accelerator.
• Manages the LA (Learning Assistants) program.
• Supervises individual faculty leaders.
• Directs workshops for faculty and student participants.
• Applies and advocates for funding to support the program; Coordinates expansion of the program to other Colleges at Mason.
• Leads efforts to assess and evaluate the effectiveness of the program.
• Coordinates data collection and analysis regarding programs, especially those involving the community beyond Mason, such as FOCUS, Noyce, STEM Bridge and Women Leaders in STEM.
• Leads and contributes to education research projects and mentors MS and PhD students for Discipline-based Educational Research (DBER) in the College of Science.
• Coordinates with multiple committees and working groups within the College of Science, to include Curriculum Committee, Faculty Matters Committee, Emerging Pedagogies committee, any others as needed; Creates regular reports for the College of Science leadership and faculty.
• Develops a vision to expand the Accelerator within the College of Science.

Requirements

• Master's degree in related field or the equivalent combination of education and experience
• Experience in budget administration (generally 5+ years)
• Experience teaching in higher education (typically 5+ years)
• Track record of successful grant administration and management
• Current knowledge of STEM education research
• Superior writing and oral communication skills
• Ability to communicate with and manage diverse groups and individuals
• Demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Nice-to-haves

• Terminal degree in a related field
• Experience teaching in higher education (typically 10+ years)
• Experience in full-time college-level administration (generally 5+ years)

Benefits

• Competitive Salary
• Hybrid Eligible Workplace
• Professional development opportunities
• Diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives