Full-Time Innovations Program Manager
Job Description
Haverford College seeks to hire a Program Manager to help the college envision, develop, and coordinate a new Innovations Program that will be based within the Visual Culture Arts and Media (VCAM) facility. This grant-funded, full time, exempt, fully benefits eligible position is scheduled to begin on January 2, 2017, with an initial five year term.
The goal of the new Innovations Program is to offer the Haverford community—students, faculty, staff, and alumni—new opportunities to create and innovate, to organize and incubate, and, above all, to learn by doing. The program seeks to provide multiple gateways to the information, visual, and social resources the community needs to engage directly with our world’s most pressing challenges in order to generate their own responses through new media and DIY products: mobile applications, film and videos, commercial and social entrepreneurship, and other externally beneficial activities.
The Program Manager, working with the VCAM Director, will be responsible for helping faculty and students develop and implement an Innovations Program that may include skills-building workshops, guest lectures, and student events during the school year. There are also plans to develop intensive summer programming as resources allow. Strong candidates will work collaboratively with faculty and staff to envision active, interdisciplinary innovation programming. The successful applicant will also have the existing knowledge/background necessary to build programming and serve as an in-person resource for the community on topics that may include, but are not limited to, business incorporation, intellectual property, start-up funding, and marketing.
The Haverford community is committed to engaging with innovation in an ethically principled way. The program will be interdisciplinary, connecting to and drawing from technology, the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. Candidates with experience working across disciplines and who can speak to these multiple constituencies are preferred.
The person in this position reports to the VCAM Director and primary duties will include:
Envisioning, developing, and administering this new Innovations Program in collaboration with interested students, faculty, and staff;
Developing, implementing, and teaching workshops in coordination with outside visitors and alumni; and organizing speakers series/visits related to innovation and entrepreneurial success;
Laying the ground work for the development and implementation of a Summer Incubator, currently still at a conceptual stage in programming and fundraising;
Working with faculty to engage existing student groups and community interest in entrepreneurial activities to maximize coordination and resource utilization;
Mentoring enterprising Haverford students, faculty, and staff as they conceive and plan new ventures;
Overseeing an ongoing process of program evaluation in consultation with the VCAM Director;
Working with the Office of Institutional Advancement and the VCAM Director to cultivate and support an alumni network of contributors to the program; assisting in efforts to secure additional resources to grow the Haverford Innovations Program.
The successful candidate will be a self-starter who is able to work effectively and collaboratively with diverse groups of stakeholders; and who possesses excellent oral and written communication skills.
Given the breadth of this position, appropriate qualifications and background will be varied. The successful candidate should have some experience directly related to the pursuit of start-up operations and program development. This could, for example, include experience connected to starting either for-profit or not-for-profit entities, experience with business/arts development and/or business, patent, copyright, or non-profit law.
A bachelor’s degree is required. An advanced degree in entrepreneurship/social innovation, business or arts design, or innovations-related law (such as contract or intellectual property law) is preferred but not required. Two years minimum experience preferred with some experience directly related to the pursuit of start-up operations and program development. Finally, some experience within the higher education/liberal arts/non-profit environment will be regarded as a plus.