Assistant Director University Residences - Dining

Position Title Assistant Director University Residences - Dining About the University

Western Washington University, with over 15,000 students in seven colleges and the graduate school, is nationally recognized for its educational programs, students and faculty. The campus is located in Bellingham, Washington, a coastal community of 90,000 overlooking Bellingham Bay, the San Juan Islands and the North Cascades Mountain range. The city lies 90 miles north of Seattle and 60 miles south of Vancouver, British Columbia. Western has additional sites in Anacortes, Bremerton, Everett, Port Angeles, and Poulsbo. Western is recognized nationally for its successes, such as being named one of the top public master's-granting institutions in the Pacific Northwest for 25 years in a row by U.S. News & World Report.

Western Washington University is committed to achieving excellence through advancing inclusive success, increasing our Washington impact, and focusing on transformational education grounded in the liberal arts and sciences and based on innovative scholarship, research, and creative activity. Western's greatest strength is the outstanding students, faculty, staff, and alumni/ae who make up its community. Western supports an inclusive governance structure for all and provides a learning and working environment in which everyone can thrive. In pursuit of this excellence, individual employees are expected to establish and maintain productive and effective inclusive working relationships amongst diverse populations including staff, faculty, administration, student, and external constituents. Further, individual employees are expected to have the ability to operationalize sustainability concepts (economic, societal, environmental) into all aspects of performing their job duties.

About the Department University Residences supports Western's mission, which states that together with our students, staff, and faculty, we are committed to making a positive impact in the state and the world with a shared focus on academic excellence and inclusive achievement. We encourage applications from women, people of color, people with disabilities, veterans, and other candidates from underrepresented backgrounds and with diverse experiences interested in this opportunity. About the Position

Western seeks a highly collaborative and creative professional to join our university team as the Assistant Director of Dining. This is an in-person and on-site position, with an anticipated start date of November 2024. This new position coordinates all aspects of Western’s dining and beverage/vending contract in a dynamic, fast-paced, and constantly evolving environment. The manager provides day-to-day support to ensure dining and beverage/vending operations are functioning smoothly across multiple sites and stakeholders have continuous communications. The scope of responsibilities includes contract management and administration, problem solving, strategic planning, customer support, and a liaison for our facilities team.

Duties/Responsibilities:

Contract Management/Administration

• Coordinate Western’s Dining and Beverage/Vending Contracts and their daily operations.
• Function as the primary advisor to the executive director and associate directors in University Residences regarding administration of dining and beverage/vending contracts and other obligatory agreements associated with these activities.
• Serve as a main contact for all dining and beverage contract activities across campus. Stakeholders include but limited to the Child Development Center, Academic Affairs, Disability Access Center, Student Life, Financial Aid, Veteran Services, the Office of the President.
• Interact with all levels at Western and contracted vendor management.
• Participate in problem-solving, assessment, and service evaluation.
• In partnership with associate director and department leadership, communicate and implement dining and auxiliary vision, mission, goals, and objectives and strategic plans with Western’s Community.
• Understand metrics of university meal plans and beverage/vending programs and use them to suggest improvements.
• Collaborate with associate director and leadership to strategically plan for fiscally sound operations, excellent customer service, and effective programmatic development.
• Understand daily operations across venues regarding service and execution and recommend efficiencies.
• Work with conferences, Office of Continuing Education, and incoming visiting groups, to facilitate and administer dining options all year around. 
• Regularly evaluate the quality of contracted dining and beverage services.
• Function as main Western contact for all dining food service challenges with ability to bring campus stakeholders together,