Santa Fe
Institute

Director of Education

The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) seeks a scholar and educator to lead all components of our education programming, both in-person and online. The Director of Education, collaborating across the organization, ensures that SFI Education programs maintain their exceptional level of academic excellence, deliver unparalleled student experiences, advance new research discoveries and approaches from SFI faculty, and expand audiences for all programs. The Director of Education leads SFI’s Education Office, a three-person team of program managers/coordinators, and works in close coordination with program directors, President’s Office, SFI Science, Applied Complexity, Sponsored Research, and Finance, among others, to ensure efficient and efficacious operation of Education within the broader organization. SFI’s core education programs include the Complex Systems Summer School (CSSS), Undergraduate Complexity Research (UCR) programs, Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science (GWCSS), and our online learning platform ComplexityExplorer.org. Topical and/or limited-run workshops, summer schools, and short courses, in a variety of formats, round out the SFI Education portfolio.

Job Responsibilities

  • Ensure that all SFI Education activities, and the associated program faculty and staff, uphold SFI’s standards of scientific rigor.
  • Ensure that SFI education is substantively connected to, and reflects, SFI Science research directions and technical approaches.
  • Ensure that SFI Education programs employ pedagogically sound and effective practices; guide faculty and mentors in current best-practices; use regular assessments as a means of continually improving programs and content delivery.
  • Maintain communication with the network of SFI Education Alumni/ae; collaborate with the President’s Office, SFI Science, and Applied Complexity to establish mechanisms that appropriately connect SFI Education program alumni/ae with other streams of SFI programing; participate in, and contribute to, ongoing Institute-wide initiatives to ensure accurate, comprehensive, and confidential record-keeping of SFI program participants and their accomplishments.
  • Develop a fiscal strategy that operates SFI Education in a financially responsible way and includes diverse funding streams; provide regular and accurate financial planning and reporting.
  • Collaborate with SFI faculty, SFI Science, Applied Complexity, Sponsored Research, and President’s Office on grant and gift opportunities of mutual interest; provide reporting and budget management for grants and/or gifts in support of Education programs.
  • Enhance and expand the potential audiences for SFI Education programs, including an effort to diversity cohorts across all dimensions.
  • Ensure that all Education programs uphold SFI’s policies, values, and culture; engender the psychological safety needed for students to learn from, disagree with, and challenge their peers, instructors, and staff.
  • Manage Education Office staff, including guiding the team to set and achieve program and collective goals; support the professional development of staff; hire and onboard new members
  • Collaborate with SFI staff across the organization to enhance processes and procedures to ensure efficient operation at an organizational level
  • Assess and report on SFI Education successes and achievement of strategic goals to various stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

  • PhD with a strong appreciation of the utility of quantitative approaches; demonstrated interest in complex systems and SFI; research experience with complex systems science preferred
  • Experience with higher education administration, PhD or postdoctoral training, educational program management, PhD-level classroom instruction, curriculum design, and/or program evaluation/assessment
  • Successful grant-writing and management experience in an academic setting; experience with federal funders such as NSF, NASA, or NIH would be an asset
  • Demonstrated success championing for specific programs within a larger academic organization
  • Strong interpersonal skills; talent for distilling and presenting complex concepts for a variety of audiences; willingness to challenge peers and be challenged by peers, without personalizing disagreements; ability to work effectively and respectfully with a wide range of constituencies
  • Ability to work in a dynamic, flexible environment; excellent problem-solving and critical decision-making skills; an eye toward process improvement and exceptionally high-quality work
  • Commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, including past contributions to efforts aimed at enhancing such
  • 5+ years of experience managing multi-disciplinary collaborative projects, teams, or programs – including annual budgets in excess of $500K
  • 2+ years of supervisory (i.e. having 1 or more direct reports) experience preferred

Apply here.

The Santa Fe Institute is an equal opportunity employer. Women and members of underrepresented groups are especially encouraged to apply, as are individuals who have taken unconventional paths in their careers.

SFI is a vaccinated community; to be employed by SFI and on-site you must provide proof of primary vaccination against COVID-19.