Outreach & Communications Specialist, Univercity Alliance

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Job Category: Academic Staff

Employment Type: Regular

Job Profile: Outreach Specialist

Job Summary:
Launched in 2015 with the Wisconsin Idea in mind, UniverCity Alliance is a partnership program that connects Wisconsin local governments with university resources to support community-identified priorities. UniverCity Alliance brings together instructors, students, and community members to address some of the greatest challenges facing communities across the state. UniverCity Alliance is housed within the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.


The successful applicant will be an integral member of the UniverCity Alliance team, collaborate with units at UW-Madison, and work to expand the program's reach on campus and across the state. The Outreach & Communications Specialist will serve a crucial role at UniverCity Alliance, supporting outreach, program management, and communications.

This position is designed with long-term leadership development in mind, and offers a potential career path that may include advancement into a managing director position based on performance and organizational needs.

Outreach (30%) • Plan, coordinate, and promote on- and off-campus events. • Seek opportunities to present at local government and campus conferences. • Draft application materials for conferences, awards, and funding opportunities. • Assist managing director in maintaining relationships with campus and community stakeholder groups. • Represent UniverCity Alliance at campus networking meetings and campus events. • Promote UniverCity Alliance-connected courses to students.


Program Management (30%) • Be the point person for receiving and packaging final deliverables from instructors and students. This includes lightly editing the reports, adding front and back covers, sharing with partners, and adding them to the website. • Manage promotion of end-of-year surveys with campus and community partners. • Support scheduling with campus and community partners, including site visit logistics • Maintain internal and external databases • Maintain listservs of former community partners, urban-interested faculty, staff, and students, and community stakeholders.• Support the managing director and advisory board.

Communications (40%) • Create communications in partnership with community and campus partners and develop outreach strategies. This includes drafting and editing promotional materials, news stories, social media campaigns, newsletters, fundraising materials, and outreach documents for relevant audiences, from the general public to policy leaders. • Find opportunities on campus to collaborate on community-based partner storytelling. • Create communications strategies and establish criteria for assessing its effectiveness. • Manage social media platforms. • Oversee UniverCity Alliance's website.

Key Job Responsibilities:

• Identifies, promotes, and maintains external partnerships to support the outreach program

• May assist with the monitoring of outreach program budget spending

Manage social media platforms and oversee UniverCity Alliance's website

Plan, coordinate, and promote on- and off-campus events, including site visits


Maintain internal and external databases and listserves of stakeholders

• Delivers outreach program content and materials to community members

• Schedules and secures resources and communicates logistics in support of an outreach program

• Develops and evaluates curriculum and programs and provides recommendations for improvement

• Leads the implementation of programs, policies, and procedures through oversight of day-to-day activities for program staff and student and community volunteers

• Researches, develops, and facilitates outreach program content and materials

Department:
Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, UniverCity Alliance

Compensation:
Minimum $50,000 12 mo.

Required Qualifications:
• Minimum one year of professional experience required; 2-3 years desired.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills

• Excellent organizational skills

• Demonstrated experience communicating with diverse audiences, including local governments, elected officials, community groups, campus partners, and public and private sectors

• Ability to summarize key issues in accessible ways and a variety of formats and to learn new knowledge about a variety of local government issues

• Experience with various social media platforms

• Experience generating content for promotional documents

Preferred Qualifications:
• Experience working for or with local governments

• Demonstrated ability to write clearly and succinctly for a range of audiences on local government and university topics

• Demonstrated experience scheduling large groups, planning and running conference calls and webinars, tracking attendance and participation, etc.

• Experience planning and facilitating meetings and events or willingness to learn

• Familiarity with urban studies and local government issues

• Experience developing outreach plans which include direct outreach, social media, and earned media approaches

• Experience recruiting, building relationships with, and organizing people from non-profit organizations, businesses, and/or local governments

Education:
Undergraduate degree or equivalent in Communications, Journalism, Public Policy, Political Science, Urban Planning, Non-Profit Management, or other social science subjects is preferred. Applicants with relevant professional backgrounds but different degrees will be considered

How to Apply:
• Candidates will be required to upload a cover letter referring to related work experience and a resume/CV detailing educational and professional background. Cover letters will be used as a writing sample and to determine the best-qualified applicants. Thus your cover letter should address your qualifications as they pertain to the minimum number of years and type of relevant work experience listed above.

• Candidates will also be presented with the option to manually enter Certifications, Education, Languages, and Website information.

• Please note that successful applicants are responsible for ensuring their eligibility to work in the United States (i.e. a citizen or national of the United States, a lawful permanent resident, a foreign national authorized to work in the United States without need of employer sponsorship) on or before the effective date of appointment. UW-Madison is not an E-Verify employer, and therefore, is not eligible to employ F1 STEM OPT Extension participants.

Contact Information:
Lili Gagliano, View email address on click.appcast.io

Institutional Statement on Diversity:
Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for UW-Madison. We value the contributions of each person and respect the profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinion enrich the university community. We commit ourselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, outreach, and diversity as inextricably linked goals.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison fulfills its public mission by creating a welcoming and inclusive community for people from every background - people who as students, faculty, and staff serve Wisconsin and the world.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is an Equal OpportunityEmployer.

Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to, including but not limited to, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin, age, pregnancy, disability, or status as a protected veteran and other bases as defined by federal regulations and UW System policies. We promote excellence by acknowledging skills and expertise from all backgroundsand encourage all qualified individuals to apply. For more information regarding applicant and employee rights and to view federal and state required postings, visit the Human Resources Workplace Poster website.

To request a disability or pregnancy-related accommodationfor any step in the hiring process (e.g., application, interview, pre-employment testing, etc.), please contact the Divisional Disability Representative (DDR)in the division you are applying to.Please make your request as soon as possible to help the university respond most effectively to you.

Employment may require a criminal background check. It may also require your references to answer questions regarding misconduct, including sexual violence and sexual harassment.

The University of Wisconsin System will not reveal the identities of applicants who request confidentiality in writing, except that the identity of the successful candidate will be released. See Wis. Stat. sec. 19.36(7).

The Annual Security and Fire Safety Report contains current campus safety and disciplinary policies, crime statistics for the previous 3 calendar years, and on-campus student housing fire safety policies and fire statistics for the previous 3 calendar years. UW-Madison will provide a paper copy upon request; please contact the University of Wisconsin Police Department.