Department Chair, Academic Schools - Prelicensure Nursing

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Western Governors University (WGU) is seeking an individual to help disrupt higher education by providing relevant, high quality, innovative programs. WGU currently has over 100,000 actively enrolled students in degree programs at both the bachelor and master’s levels and across several endorsement programs. Enrollment has grown exponentially year over year for the past several years and is projected to continue this phenomenal growth. We are looking for a dynamic and future-thinking leader that will provide input on the vision, strategy, and roadmap to achieve this exciting and transformative mission.

The Leavitt School of Health department chair ensures the integrity, excellence, national reputation, and continuous improvement of assigned educational programs through leadership, influence, innovation, partnerships, and the advancement of the discipline. This position exhibits the highest level of expertise and knowledge in the educational department/program. This position helps ensure our program(s) are of the highest quality by providing the most relevant and current information, blending industry-based knowledge and academics. The department chair will lead the program cross-functional team, have in-depth knowledge of the organization’s goals, and is responsible for student success and all associated program outcomes.

The department chair must be skillful in curriculum planning and analysis, faculty development, and developing internal and external relationships. This position is responsible for communicating relevant program information to stakeholders. The department chair will work with school-level leadership to help establish operational /strategic objectives and to positively impact student outcomes, program quality and enrollment growth within educational programs. The department chair provides and advocates for the program course faculty, facilitates faculty evaluation, program evaluation, continuous quality improvement to advance education excellence, maintains the programs P&L, is the subject matter expert for their program working collaboratively though the curriculum development and implementation process to ensure positive student learning outcomes and overall program outcomes. The department chair provides direct oversight of the program, this includes, but is not limited to, processes, outcomes, surveillance of student admission, progression, graduation data; faculty-student ratios; experiential learning opportunities; and leadership of track revisions.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Creates and approves goals for department by interpreting and supporting the goals of the institution as they relate to the department.

• Drives a culture of continuous experimentation, measurement, and learning from data to rapidly improve the quality and delivery to students.

• Implements and/or reinforces changes based on policy decisions; interprets department policies to faculty, staff, students, and/or public.

• Informs the Academic Programs Director of decisions involving changes in the department and issues.

• Contributes to systematic program evaluation and maintenance of academic standards and policies of the School in conjunction with other department chairs and School-level leadership.

• Leads matrixed cross functional teams across multiple departments to achieve expected outcomes.

• Works with cross-functional teams to ensure program and course content is relevant to workforce needs, rigorous, responsive, and aligns to defined student competencies.

• Participates as an effective change leader within the various meetings and functions of the position.

• Performs tracking and analyzing of program data, specifically student performance and enrollment data.

• Integrates the curricula and operations of the department with those of the program.

• Keeps current on trends, issues, and initiatives in the School's related fields of education that affect teaching and learning within the dep