Senior Director, Success Coaching and Advising

The Success Coaching Program within Academic Advising was created in 2019 with the intention of fully supporting first-generation and/or limited-income (FLI) students, a population that now represents about a third of all undergraduate students. By providing intensive success coaching using an appreciative, strengths-based advising model, staff in the hybrid role of advisor/coach support students in increasing retention, completion, engagement, satisfaction, and social mobility. We are seeking a Senior Director, Success Coaching and Academic Advising (SCAA) who will be responsible for the leadership, vision, and strategic direction, meeting and reporting the goals and outcomes of the program, and the direct supervision of the SCAA leadership team. This position directly supervises up to six SCAA staff members and will oversee a total staff of twenty-four; this role is supported by a Senior Administrative Coordinator.

The position reports to the Associate Vice Provost of Student Success and Retention Initiatives, positioned in the Division of Student Affairs, where over 400 staff members serve Johns Hopkins undergraduate students. The Senior Director serves as a collaborative partner with the Assistant Deans of Advising in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and Whiting School of Engineering to build and maintain relationships to enhance collaboration between Student Success offices and other USS offices. This position regularly meets with members of the Student Success leadership team, leads the holistic advising workgroup, and participates as an active partner on the Student Success Initiative/Achieving Success Action Plan (ASAP) Workgroup.

The Senior Director’s work develops within established principles that frame the University’s Student Success Strategic Plan to increase rates of timely graduation and to build integrated services, optimize data-driven learning and adaptation, serve the greater good, activate all institutional resources, and address areas of friction/barriers that interrupt students’ ability to remain enrolled term to term. 

The Senior Director is responsible for 24 full-time employees (FTEs) and supervises a team of professional staff members who are embedded across multiple locations and have dual accountability. The SCAA team consists of Associate and Assistant Directors, Academic Advisor/Success Coaches, an Administrative Coordinator, and a Graduate Assistant. Currently, the Senior Director supervises six direct reports. While SCAA currently comprises a team of 24 FTEs, more roles may be added to accommodate the Student Success and Retention unit’s new framework, for a potential total of 27 FTEs.

Specific Duties & Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership

• Oversee the program's expansion, ensuring alignment with the University's Student Success Strategic Plan.
• Serve as the lead for the Achieving Success Action Plan (ASAP) sub-workgroup on holistic advising.
• Leverage university-wide holistic advising.
• Identify student support services, systems, and experience enhancements that foster student connection, belonging, and community.
• Standing member of the ASAP Workgroup that monitors student retention, identifies students at risk for attrition, and identifies institutional systems that create barriers to student retention and persistence.
• Collaborate closely with the Assistant Deans of Advising in the University Schools to build and maintain relationships to enhance collaboration between the Student Success Strategic Plan and other USS offices.
• Identify and address areas of friction/barriers that impede students’ ability to remain enrolled term to term, thereby increasing rates of timely graduation.
• Coordinate with Associate Deans of Advising to leverage student-centered, outcome-oriented advising technology platform.
• Foster collaboration to provide seamless services to students and university constituents.
• Inform decision-making with short-term actions and interventions to improve student success alignment with guiding principles, best practices, and key strategies.
• Convene and lead an advisory team of Associate Directors within SCAA toward the further strategic development of the program’s staff-facing and student-facing work.
• Develop and oversee processes necessary to manage SCAA within the Office of Advising’s current and future operations
• Develop and manage annual budgets; work closely with the Bloomberg budget analyst and CSS Finance Team to monitor accounts associated with SCAA.
• Align financial and human resources with priorities.
• In collaboration with campus partners, design and lead FLI student recruitment for SCAA to ensure that the university is matching FLI students with appropriate opportunities an