Executive Assistant

Job Summary

The Executive Assistant (EA) serves as a strategic partner to the Assistant Vice Provost for Student Success and Senior Director of the Comprehensive Studies Program. This role goes beyond traditional administrative support and operates at the center of strategy, coordination, and execution across a complex and evolving portfolio. This role complements the work of project managers and program leads by ensuring alignment, visibility, and coordination across initiatives at the leadership level.

The EA plays a critical role in managing priorities, coordinating initiatives, and ensuring alignment across multiple stakeholders, including senior university leaders, faculty, and external partners. This position requires a high level of judgment, discretion, and initiative, as well as the ability to anticipate needs, bring structure to complexity, and ensure that work moves forward effectively.

As a key contributor in a fast-paced, collaborative environment, the EA supports the Assistant Vice Provost for Student Success and Senior Director of the Comprehensive Studies Program across student success initiatives, including cross-campus partnerships and LSA's First-Generation Pathways portfolio. This role is essential to ensuring that strategic priorities are translated into coordinated action. Therefore, this role is typically expected to be on-site four days per week with significant on-site presence aligned with leadership and operational needs.

Responsibilities*

The Executive Assistant serves as a strategic partner to the Assistant Vice Provost for Student Success and Senior Director of the Comprehensive Studies Program. In this role, the Executive Assistant helps manage priorities, drive coordination, and ensure strong execution across a complex and evolving portfolio that includes cross-campus student success efforts and LSA's First-Generation Pathways initiative.

This position operates at the intersection of strategy and execution, supporting leadership by aligning time, coordinating across multiple initiatives, and ensuring visibility and follow-through on key priorities. While individual initiatives may be led by project managers and program directors, this role helps maintain alignment across that work, ensuring the Assistant Vice Provost has clear visibility into progress, risks, and emerging priorities across the portfolio, without directly managing individual projects.

Responsibilities are carried out both independently and in close collaboration with campus partners, leadership colleagues, and administrative staff.

Strategic Calendar and Leadership Coordination (35-40%)

• Proactively manage a high-volume, frequently changing calendar involving internal and external meetings, events, and commitments across multiple priorities and stakeholder groups.
• Align calendar decisions with strategic priorities, identifying conflicts, opportunities, and gaps in leadership engagement.
• Make informed, real-time decisions regarding scheduling and prioritization, resolving conflicts efficiently and independently.
• Coordinate communication and follow-up across project managers, directors, and initiative leads to ensure alignment and clarity across the portfolio.
• Help synthesize updates from multiple initiatives into clear, concise summaries for leadership awareness and decision-making.
• Coordinate all logistical aspects of meetings and events, including room reservations, virtual platforms, technology needs, catering, agendas, briefing materials, and follow-up communications.
• Prepare the Assistant Vice Provost for meetings by organizing materials, clarifying purpose and outcomes, and ensuring timely reminders and preparation.
• Support executive meetings, all-staff meetings, cross-campus workgroups, and special events through planning, logistics, documentation, and follow-through.
• Serve as a key point of contact for scheduling and coordination with senior leaders, faculty, staff, and external partners.
• Anticipate scheduling needs and adjust plans proactively to support changing priorities and emerging opportunities.

Executive Communications & Stakeholder Engagement (25-30%)

• Draft, edit, proofread, and finalize professional communications, including emails, memos, reports, presentations, and meeting summaries.
• Prepare briefing materials and background documents for meetings with senior leaders, faculty, staff, and external partners.
• Coordinate communications across campus partners to ensure clarity, consistency, and timely follow-up.
• Manage confidential and sensitive information with professionalism, discretion, and sound judgment.
• Support stakeholder engagement, including preparation for meetings, coordination of logistics, and tracking follow-up actions.
• Clearly and effectively communicate information to individuals from diverse roles and backgrounds, fostering strong working relationships.
• Maintain organized records, files, and materials related to leadership priorities and ongoing initiatives.

Travel and Expense Support (10-15%)

• Coordinate complex travel arrangements and hosting logistics in alignment with university policies and leadership priorities.
• Prepare detailed travel itineraries, schedules, and supporting materials.
• Reconcile travel and expense reports promptly and accurately, ensuring appropriate documentation and compliance.
• Gather receipts and supporting materials and manage post-travel follow-up.
• Prepare exception memos or related documentation when necessary to ensure compliance with policies and procedures.
• Track deadlines and requirements to ensure smooth execution of all travel-related processes.

General Office Support (10%)

• Help translate leadership priorities and discussions into coordinated next steps, ensuring clarity, alignment, and follow-through across stakeholders.
• Create, review, and update administrative process documentation on a regular schedule.
• Help identify and implement opportunities to improve administrative processes and increase efficiencies where needed.
• Track and synthesize updates across multiple initiatives, providing regular summaries of progress, risks, and priorities to support leadership awareness and decision-making.
• Collaborate closely with staff to foster a positive, engaged, and creative office culture that supports learning and continuous improvement.
• Support coordination across a distributed leadership team, helping ensure alignment, communication, and follow-through across projects led by directors and project managers.
• Maintain systems or tools to organize information across initiatives, ensuring visibility into timelines, priorities, and key deliverables.

Professional Development (5%)

• Engage in ongoing learning and development to strengthen performance and contribute to a culture of continuous improvement.
• Complete and actively participate in all required university, college, and unit trainings.
• Pursue opportunities to strengthen skills in project coordination, communication, and executive-level support.
• Participate in campus events, workshops, or professional development opportunities to deepen understanding of the university and student success work.
• Contribute to a learning-oriented environment by identifying opportunities to improve processes and share knowledge.

Required Qualifications*

• A high school education or equivalent and more than 5 years of experience to the required qualifications.
• Demonstrated experience supporting executive-level professionals in a fast-paced administrative role requiring confidentiality, timeliness, customer service, organization, and prioritization.
• Demonstrated editing, proofing, and writing experience.
• Strong communication skills, with excellent people skills.
• Demonstrated ability to develop good working relationships with internal and external constituency groups and to work collaboratively with colleagues in a team environment.
• Experience working with confidential and sensitive information, demonstrating integrity and professionalism.
• Experience with strategic project management, including tracking action items, developing timelines, and monitoring progress to set and reach both short and long-term goals.
• Strong organizational skills, demonstrated initiative, acute attention to detail, and the ability to set and adjust priorities independently.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively with competing priorities.
• Proficient in the use of the Microsoft Office Suite (Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.) and Google Suite (Mail, Sheets, Slides, Forms, etc.).
• Experience working with a customer relationship and/or project management tools. (ie. PeopleSoft, ASANA, DART, etc.)

Additional Information

As one of the world's great liberal arts and sciences colleges, LSA pushes the boundaries of what is understood about the human experience and the natural world, and we foster the next generation of rigorous and empathetic thinkers, creators, and contributors to the state of Michigan, the nation, and the world.

To learn more about LSA's Mission, Vision and Values, please visit lsa.umich.edu/strategicvision.

Background Screening

The University of Michigan conducts background checks on all job candidates upon acceptance of a contingent offer and may use a third party administrator to conduct background checks. Background checks are performed in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Application Deadline

Job openings are posted for a minimum of seven calendar days. The review and selection process may begin as early as the eighth day after posting. This opening may be removed from posting boards and filled any time after the minimum posting period has ended.

U-M EEO Statement

The University of Michigan