Senior Lead School Compliance Advisor

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.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Oversees longitudinal projects relating to accreditation (e.g., self-studies, reports, site visits), briefing leaders along the path to successful completion of the accreditation process;
• Serves as lead author on each of these documents, writing the bulk of the narrative and ensuring the final product and all attachments are in “one voice;”
• Monitors, consults, and advises all stakeholders regarding changes to national, state, and professional regulations, guidelines, and standards to support accreditation and compliance activities for each credential offered by the assigned college;
• Liaises with university departments to obtain engagement, data, and support for accreditation and compliance activities and provide information about requirements to ensure both collegiate and overall university compliance;
• Consults with college and university leadership, participates in relevant programmatic meetings, and engages with the program lifecycle process on major and minor curriculum changes, substantive change reports, and other changes that may affect compliance with accreditation or approval agencies;
• Advises internal departments on operational, regulatory requirements for faculty credentialing and professional development;
• Supports projects that colleges have in their strategic and operating plans pertaining to new programs or credential offerings (obtaining necessary regulatory approvals) and quality assurance (researching and obtaining necessary approvals and/or accreditation);
• Assists regional leadership on issues related to jurisdiction-specific accreditation or recognition;
• Surfaces problems with the ability to operate in specific jurisdictions, analyses each to find a root cause, and suggests ways to improve processes and systems to keep the problem from reoccurring and potentially proactively applying those learnings to other jurisdictions to avoid the issue altogether;
• Liaises with accreditors, regulatory oversight bodies, and appropriate professional organizations;
• Prepares the college for site visits (using mock visits and other techniques, as needed), manages the logistics and communication flows for the visit, and analyzes visiting team feedback to produce a final report;
• Responds in a timely fashion to changing requirements, priorities, and short deadlines; and
• Performs other related duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skill and Abilities:

• Technological competence with MS Office suite (Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, and Office 360) and data collection, analysis, retrieval, and visualization systems;
• Interpersonal relationship skills (social-emotional intelligence) of confidence, focus, ethics, and accountability as demonstrated by checks with multiple layers of references.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with the ability to present information clearly and accurately.
• Able to work well within a team but independent enough to work well alone.
• Understand the organization and arrangement of legal information in various formats.
• Ability to synthesize and communicate complex analyses and discussions into written documentation; and exercise good judgment and effectively organize, prioritize, and perform multiple job functions and conflicting priorities.
• Understands and strictly maintains confidentiality relating to work in the Department, the Colleges, and the University.

Competencies:

Organizational Impact:

• Responsible for implementing initiatives and projects established by university or department leadership; establishes strategic, operational plans for department, function, or office with short to mid-term impact on results. 
• Delivers measurable input into new processes, standards, or plans that impact the achievement of overall university or department results.

Problem Solving & Decision Making:

• Leverages a systems-thinking approach for improving existing processes and systems using significant conceptualizing, reas