At the University of Rochester, values define the mission, to Learn, Discover, Heal, Create—and Make the World Ever Better. Embedded in that ideal are the shared values: equity, leadership, integrity, openness, respect, and accountability.
THE OPPORTUNITY
The University of Rochester invites candidates and nominations for an innovative and collaborative Senior Associate Director of Admissions for Access and Outreach. The selected candidate will identify, recruit, and enroll undergraduate students in the School of Arts & Sciences and the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences who have been historically underrepresented, as well as students interested in transferring to Rochester. The Senior Associate Director will work with prospective students, families, school officials, community-based organizations, and others in a highly collaborative fashion. Reporting to the Director of Admission, and working closely with the Vice Provost and University Dean of Enrollment Management, the Senior Associate Director will supervise a team of five professional admissions staff and student workers and is one of several senior leaders within the Office of Admissions; they will partner with individuals throughout the division of Admissions, Financial Aid and Enrollment and across the university campus to meet enrollment goals.
Responsibilities, Duties, and Priorities:
The chosen candidate will be responsible for the following responsibilities, duties, and priorities:
Access Outreach and Inclusive Enrollment Management
- Supervises strategic partnerships and campaigns for first-generation, low socioeconomic, and underrepresented/underserved students.
- Leads the development of year-round activities on campus with community-based organizations, creates publications, web, and print advertising, and develops invitations and other materials in support of on- and off-campus annual events.
- Consults with the Director and Dean to develop strategy, messaging, and web content.
- Develops overall recruitment and enrollment strategies to ensure each enrolling class addresses national demographic shifts.
- Creates comprehensive annual outreach report for the Director and Dean that encapsulates all access-oriented admissions endeavors, to provide substantive narrative, data on recruitment initiatives and strategic planning.
- Contributes perspectives, insights, and knowledge as the subject matter expert enabling the office to achieve measurable results across multiple populations who have historically been underrepresented on college/university campuses.
- Provides coaching to the Admissions team and Enrollment division to create opportunities for improving educational access in outreach efforts.
- Supervises admissions staff supporting enrollment activities for ~150 new transfer students per year.
- Serves year-round as an admissions leader; communicates office priorities and protocols to counseling, project, and support staff.
- Continues their growth and development in the Admissions domain through attendance at conferences, workshops, and campus events as a participant, panelist, presenter, or moderator; researches and implements best practices, remains current and incorporates knowledge into practice.
Pipeline Strategy Development and Management
- Evaluates and modifies practices based on historical and current data to ensure best outcomes for underserved, underrepresented, non-traditional and special populations.
- Provides guidance to the Director, Dean and all staff as needed to address educational access and developmental activities and collaborates as needed with the Director of Financial Aid and Enrollment stakeholders.
- Oversees a budget dedicated to developing ‘pipeline’ activities and partnerships for college-bound youth locally, regionally, and nationally.
- Directs and leads teams specialized in creating, maintaining, and evaluating effectiveness of early outreach, youth-serving, and on-campus outreach programs (e.g., overnight hosting, group visit programs throughout the year).
- Provides oversight of key marketing outreach initiatives using Slate and thinks creatively to connect with students and families who have historically been underrepresented on college campuses using multiple forms of media.
- Maintains and effectively utilizes a comprehensive database of Community Based Organizations within Slate to ensure ongoing-targeted outreach to promote all phases of admissions and recruitment initiatives.
- Leads local outreach and partnership activities in the City of Rochester and the Rochester City School District. e.g., the partnership programs with Wilson and East high schools, and Pre-College Programs offered virtually and in-person.
Campus Partnership Outreach
- Serves as liaison between the Office of Admissions and key campus partners such as the Institutional Office of Equity and Inclusion, Office of Minority Student Affairs, Kearns Center, Douglas Leadership House, Rochester Center for Community Leadership, etc. to create effective recruitment partnerships and connect the greater campus community to prospective students and families.
- Develops key collaborative partnerships with multicultural student organizations, such as the First Gen Network, Puerto Rican Student Association, Black Students’ Union (BSU), and National Association for Black Engineers (NSBE), Pride Network, Spanish and Latino Student’s Association (SALSA) to provide enhanced opportunities for connections between current students and prospective students.
- Guides admissions efforts related to the successful enrollment initiatives centered on conditional admissions summer bridge programs to the University of Rochester, such as the New York Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP) and Rochester’s Early Connection Opportunity (ECO) program.
Team Lead and Management
- Directs a team of on campus travelers during fall and spring travel and assigns travelers to regional territories; oversees the entire travel process with an eye toward providing higher-level strategy regarding recruitment across the assigned regional territory and approves or modifies travel proposals from team members to ensure that regional programs remain aligned with enrollment goals.
- Formulates, creates, and maintains yearly fiscal regional budget and approves budgets submitted by team members for fall and spring travel; responsible for ensuring that travelers maintain a budget plan that adheres to division-wide goals.
- Crafts a strategy (interview events, college fairs, etc.) using high-level decision making on how to best engage students across the regionally assigned recruitment territories to drive increased applications to help the university meet its enrollment goals.
- Manages travel team debrief and conducts team audit to produce reports for Director and Dean; provides feedback to team members to ensure that travel recruitment has been successful within overall department goals and has wide latitude to shift future travel planning based on these reports.
- Meets annually with the Dean, Director and other team leads to create territory boundaries and appropriate staffing levels; matches staff to specific territories based on everyone’s skills and expert knowledge of the needs in the region to ensure continued recruitment success in territory.
- Directs yield activity in territory using expert knowledge of territory needs to plan region specific events aimed at enrolling the best students from each area.
General Counseling and Recruitment Travel
- Engages in recruitment travel to connect with students at college fairs, high school visits, special programs, group, and organizational presentations throughout the calendar year, with special emphasis on fall and spring.
- Interviews 200+ prospective students and meets with families both in individual and group information sessions regularly throughout the year.
- Communicates with prospective students, guidance counselors and families in person, virtually, via the phone, and through email.
- Reads a minimum of 500 undergraduate applications (December through February) from assigned regions and schools requiring weekend and evening work during peak seasons and recommends merit scholarship decisions to the Dean and Director.
- Serves as second reader for 600+ files.
Qualifications, Abilities, and Desired Characteristics:
The successful candidate must have a Bachelor’s degree (master’s preferred) and eight years of progressive experience in higher education, school, community-based college, and independent school counseling, staff, or project management with an emphasis on the secondary school to college transition. While meeting enrollment and revenue goals, the Senior Associate Director will incorporate a global perspective and a commitment to issues of access, equity, and inclusion in higher education in a culturally diverse environment. Additionally, the ideal candidate will possess the following abilities and characteristics:
- Mature leader who is able to work autonomously, with independent initiative, support and guidance.
- Willingness to travel where needed; dedicated to working long hours during peak seasons.
- Successful and proven manager with the ability to empower, advocate for, train and direct other staff and students among multiple and competing priorities.
- Ability to use technology and make data driven decisions (prior experience working with Slate is preferred).
- Superior intercultural communication skills, judgment, data analysis, and management and leadership skills.
- Knowledgeable regarding the changing demographics and the highly competitive landscape; ability to lead the campus community in understanding challenges and guide community partners in building effective activities in response.
- Possession of a strong professional network as well as visibility within national or regional enrollment organizations.
UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER
Founded in 1850, the University of Rochester is one of the nation’s leading research universities and is the cultural, artistic, healthcare, and educational leader for the region. The University is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is a founding member of the Consortium of Financing Higher Education (COFHE), a group of 35 leading private colleges and universities in the United States. The University is home to nearly 12,000 students and 3,900 full- and part-time faculty, who serve the University’s teaching, research, and clinical missions in eight schools and colleges and its renowned medical center. The faculty currently includes 16 members of the National Academies, and the University boasts 13 Nobel laureates among its alumni and faculty.
Rochester is ranked 36th among national universities according to U.S. News & World Report and is the fifth largest private employer in New York State. The University’s academic units include: the School of Arts and Sciences, the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Eastman School of Music, the Simon Business School, the Warner School of Education, the School of Medicine and Dentistry, the School of Nursing, and the Eastman Institute of Oral Health. Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Business, and Education are collocated on the River Campus, immediately adjacent to the Medical Center. The Eastman School of Music, Memorial Art Gallery, and NextCorps, a University-affiliated business incubator, are located in downtown Rochester, a short shuttle ride away, while the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, the world’s largest university-based laser facility, is a few minutes’ drive from central campus. Taken together, the University has major areas of excellence in the arts, music, and the humanities; social sciences; natural science and engineering; and medical research, and this physical proximity works to foster interdisciplinary collaborations across schools.
Vision and Values
As a community, the University of Rochester is defined by a deep commitment to its motto of Meliora, which means “ever better”. Embedded in that ideal are the university-wide shared values of equity, leadership, integrity, openness, respect, and accountability. Together, these values frame the highest standards for how all members of the Rochester community treat each other to ensure the university is welcoming and a place where all can thrive.
Vision
The University of Rochester will continue to frame and solve the greatest challenges of the future. It is a community in which all who work, teach, create, and provide care are welcome and respected, and where all can pursue and achieve their highest objectives for themselves, their community, and the world. Steeped in Rochester’s rich history of social justice and entrepreneurial spirit, the University will always be an inclusive, equitable, sustainable, and responsive organization at every level.
Values
The Rochester Community states its university-wide values as follows: We will hold ourselves accountable to these values in the design of our programs, the development and delivery of our services, the evaluation of performance, and the ways in which we interact as a community.
- Meliora: We strive to be ever better, for everyone.
- Equity: We commit to diversity, inclusion, and access.
- Leadership: We take initiative and share responsibility for exemplifying excellence.
- Integrity: We conduct ourselves with honesty, dedication, and fairness.
- Openness: We embrace freedom of ideas, inquiry, and expression.
- Respect: We value our differences, our environment, and our individual and collective contributions.
- Accountability: We are responsible for making our community ever better, through our actions, our words, and our dealings with others.
Students, Faculty and Staff
The University of Rochester’s 6,500 undergraduate students and nearly 5,000 graduate students hail from all 50 states and from over 141 countries around the world. Undergraduate student enrollment has increased by 7% over the last five years, and this year’s incoming Arts, Science & Engineering undergraduates were selected from nearly 21,000 applications. These 1,400+ first year and 100 transfer students are the most academically accomplished in University history, with an average 3.77 high school GPA in extremely rigorous courses. More than 42% committed to Rochester as Early Decision applicants.
International students make up 25% of the class, with 57 countries represented by primary citizenship. Current levels of underrepresented students are ahead of the past several years, with more than 5% Black/African American students and nearly 10% Hispanic/LatinX students (on pace to be a record high). 22% will be among the first generation in their family to attend college, and 20% are Pell Grant eligible, representing Rochester’s longstanding commitment to admit and enroll students across the socioeconomic spectrum.
Each of Rochester’s 6,500 undergraduate students customize their academic experience from outset. With no general education requirements, every student in every class wants to be there and is highly engaged. Right away, entering students can delve into specific academic areas, while other exploratory students who have not chosen a major begin an intellectual adventure with the help of advisors and professors. Many students explore interdisciplinary studies or carry multiple majors. Rochester offers academic merit scholarships and meets 100% of demonstrated need for admitted students. Rochester’s holistic test-optional admissions process assesses academic excellence but also asks: What are your values? How have you made yourself and your community better? How will you make the world better?
The University of Rochester’s 3,900 outstanding full- and part-time faculty are active scholars, researchers, healers, and creators who have made significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge and culture for the betterment of society. Many are distinguished by their efforts to combine research and teaching with community engagement. The current faculty boasts numerous members of the National Academies of Sciences, Medicine, Engineering, and Education and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Rochester alumni and faculty have to date received a total of 13 Nobel Prizes, across a range of categories that includes physics, medicine or physiology, and economics.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
As a top priority for President Mangelsdorf’s tenure, the University of Rochester works toward being a community in which all who work, teach, create, and provide care are welcome and respected, and where all can pursue and achieve their highest objectives for themselves, their communities, and the world. Steeped in the city of Rochester’s rich history of social justice, the University strives to be an inclusive, equitable, sustainable, and responsive organization at every level. The University believes that a diverse workforce and an equitable, respectful, and inclusive workplace culture enhance the performance of the organization and is the responsibility of every leader.
The University’s Vice President for Equity and Inclusion is a key partner to the entire leadership team in ensuring equity across the institution; fostering a culture of respect and inclusion for all; and advocating for the role that diversity and equity initiatives play in achieving institutional excellence.
The University of Rochester Office of Equity and Inclusion is dedicated to cultivating an equitable, respectful, and welcoming culture at the University of Rochester. It strives to weave diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout the University’s mission to learn, discover, heal, and create. They celebrate their connections to the Rochester community and affirm that in a pluralistic culture, the definition of community includes individuals who represent every race, creed, color, ability, sexual identity, and gender.
The work of the Office of Equity and Inclusion focuses on five institutional priorities.
- Developing and sustaining an infrastructure to support equity, diversity, and inclusion.
- Enhancing the recruitment and retention of our representational diversity of faculty, staff, and students.
- Cultivating an inclusive climate, culture, and University Community.
- Advancing the University’s mission through an equity, diversity, and inclusion lens.
- Community engagement for racial and social justice.
The University of Rochester has received the 2021 Higher Education Excellence in Diversity (HEED) Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, the oldest and largest diversity-focused publication in higher education, and was recently awarded a perfect FIVE STARS on the Campus Pride Index (CPI) for LGBTQ inclusivity.
For more information, visit https://www.rochester.edu/diversity/
Location
Known by many names—the Flower City (or the Flour City), the ROC, the 5-8-5— Rochester is located in western New York and closer to Toronto than to New York City, although both are within driving distance. From sailing to rowing, skiing to hiking, there’s something new or different for outdoor enthusiasts to try all year round. Jazz, lilacs, film, food trucks, the Erie Canal—there is likely a festival or event celebrating it sometime in the spring through fall. Sports fans, meanwhile, can attend the home games of Rochester’s professional baseball team (the Red Wings) or hockey team (the Amerks). The walkable downtown—complete with a scenic river walkway and majestic waterfall—is surrounded by the natural wonders of the Genesee River, the Finger Lakes, and the Great Lakes, along with parks, trails, beaches, gorges, and wine country.
A unique blend of natural and man-made resources and amenities give Rochester a high quality of life. Straddling the Genesee River between the Erie Canal and Lake Ontario, Rochester offers a natural beauty that is easily accessible by a network of parks, trails, boat launches and scenic overlooks. The city is divided into dozens of distinct neighborhoods and urban villages supported by an eclectic mix of stores and restaurants. Quality housing is available at reasonable prices. The city’s central location in Western New York provides residents a short drive to such destinations as Niagara Falls, the Finger Lakes region, and the Adirondack Mountains. Big city destinations, including New York, Toronto, and Boston are also within a day’s drive.
Additional information about the University of Rochester may be found at www.rochester.edu.
COMPENSATION
The full compensation range for this position is $84,700 to $127,000. University of Rochester’s salary grades represent an absolute minimum and maximum for staff members in a job category. It is most likely that a candidate meeting the desired qualifications for this role will be offered a salary in the $95,000-$100,000 range.
TO APPLY
University of Rochester is partnering with NES to identify the best professional to fill the position of Senior Associate Director of Admissions for Access and Outreach. To arrange for a confidential conversation or to nominate someone for this position, please contact Mary Napier or Laura Robinson or Suzi Nam. To apply, send 1) a resume, 2) a detailed letter of interest regarding your interest in University of Rochester, and 3) contact information for five professional references by email to: rochester@nessearches.com. For best assurance of full consideration, interested individuals should submit application materials no later than October 6, 2023. Resumes will be reviewed until the position is filled. All applications and nominations will be considered confidential, and notice will be given before references are contacted. Anticipated start date is fall 2023; the selected candidate will be based on the University of Rochester campus.
The University of Rochester is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to you without regard to race, creed, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy, marital status, age, veteran status, medical condition or disability, genetic information, gender identity, or any other protected status under federal, state, or local law.