Senior Educational Program Designer

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.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:
 

Grade: Faculty 507

Pay Range: $78,300.00 - $117,500.00

Job Description

Reporting to the Senior Manager, Design & Development, the Senior Educational Program Designer is a thought leader and advocate for new and emerging program design. The Senior Educational Program Designer will lead and facilitate the design of competency-based higher educational programs that emphasize students’ ability to acquire and demonstrate skills, not the amount of time spent learning. This person will use curiosity, empathy, and experience with convergent experience design to anticipate and investigate the impact of decisions made about program design across the entire enterprise of competency-based education. They are a systems thinker who can guide cross-functional teams in translating complex student and business needs into programs that provide efficient and personalized learning pathways. They will focus relentlessly on ensuring that program designs resonate with employers, learners, and policymakers, and will employ best practices and innovative practices for program design in the competency-based education context. The Senior Educational Program Designer will create designs that optimize: the value proposition for the learner; the resources required; student engagement; successful learning experiences; and financial sustainability. They will connect internal and external stakeholders for information exchange, problem solving, and designing education programs to achieve impact. 

Location: This position requires you to work at our headquarters, 4001 South 700 East Salt Lake City, UT 84107. You would work a hybrid schedule in the office 4 days a week with one day remote.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:  

• Break down complex problems and explore ways to delight users with tools that solve their problems efficiently and effectively. 
• Collaborate and partner with cross-functional teams of program development, academic, operations, and other stakeholders. 
• Design programs that deliver on the promise of competency-based education to provide efficiency, flexibility, personalization, achievement of goals, and fit with industry expectations. 
• Design programs that promote social mobility and equity. 
• Ensure that program designs maximize broad access, including for underserved students, industry relevance, learning, and financial sustainability. 
• Apply best practices in backwards program design to the context of CBE (Competency-based Education) programs. 
• Quickly discover and prototype potential options, then weigh trade-offs between choices. 
• Anticipate, advise upon, and document the cost, scope, and implementation effort of competing program design options. 
• Apply a systems-thinking approach to help collaborators consider all elements of program design, such as enrollment, learner engagement, curriculum, instruction, evaluation, assessment, etc. 
• Collaborate on the identification of student personas and ensure that pathways efficiently meet their needs. 
• Conduct industry and outside standards research and align program designs to industry and outside standard needs. 
• Select outcomes and design programs in meaningful ways. 
• Assess the sustainability of a program design at scale over its lifec