Grant Project Manager IV

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

This project manager role is a highly visible role leading grant-funded project activities, specifically ensuring regular communication with project team members and stakeholders, managing project budgets to ensure compliance to grant requirements and driving consistent project documentation for transparency of deliverable status and reporting.

Job Profile Summary:

The Project Manager IV will stay informed on projects within assigned team and ensure best practices are used across the functional team, mentoring and developing project managers and associate project managers in their work. This individual manages projects from inception through completion within their assigned department. The Project Manager IV monitors and reports project status—including risks, issues affecting project schedules, and milestone achievements—to stakeholders and departmental leadership. The individual develops project plans and schedules and ensures projects meet departmental requirements, standards, policies, and deadlines. The Project Manager IV is expected to keep fully informed of departmental strategies and priorities and effectively influence the work of project team members in line with those priorities.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Collaborates with other professionals both inside and outside of the university to promote a positive, student-obsessed atmosphere.
• Responsible for maintaining effective communication and coordination within project team.
• Manages all phases of assigned projects (i.e., initiating, planning, executing, monitoring/controlling, and closing).
• Keeps stakeholders and departmental leadership informed of project statuses, including, but not limited to, milestone achievements, toll gate progress, risks, and any issues that may adversely affect project schedules.
• Keeps project management records and systems accurate and up to date.
• Produces timely and accurate reports as directed.
• Develops realistic project plans and schedules by analyzing organizational process assets, enterprise environmental factors, task dependencies, resource requirements, work breakdown, and departmental strategy and priorities.
• Documents project deliverables, outputs, and notes that capture why key project decisions were made.
• Understands departmental strategic priorities and influences the actions and work efforts of team members in line those priorities.
• Provides leadership, mentorship, and training support to teams, project managers and associate project managers.
• Performs other related duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skill and Abilities:

• Excellent leadership and project management skills.
• Works well in a team environment.
•  Ability to influence change and motivate others.
• Strong oral and written communications abilities.
• Solid technical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to plan and meet schedules.
• Ability to use all related computer equipment and applications
• Understanding of Business Process Architecture Mapping.

Competencies: 

Organizational Impact: 

• Responsible for implementing initiatives and projects established by university or department leadership; establishes operational plans for department, function, or office with short-term impact on results. ​ 
• May deliver input into new processes, standards, or plans that impact overall university or department results. 

Problem Solving & Decision Making: 

• Leverages a systems-thinking approach for improving existing processes and systems within the department using significant conceptualizing, reasoning, and interpretation.​ 
• Problems and issues faced are numerous, difficult, and require detailed information gathering and analysis. Typically affect multiple areas or specialties. Problems and issues span a wide range of challenging and unique situations.  

Communica