Clinical Operations Specialist

Clinical Operations Specialist

Clinical Operations Specialist is an internal data and compliance analyst embedded within the Healthcare Center of Excellence (HCOE) Operations function at Strategic Education, Inc. This role serves as the primary owner of regulatory intelligence, state-level approval tracking, accreditation data support, and operational reporting across all HCOE healthcare programs at Capella University and Strayer University. Operating as a shared service, this role supports academic units at both institutions by maintaining the data infrastructure, dashboards, and reporting systems that enable the Assistant Dean for Operations, Executive Dean, Deans, program directors, accreditation leads, and senior leadership to make informed, timely decisions. This is a dedicated analytical and operational support position designed to reduce administrative burden on senior academic leaders while increasing the organization's visibility into and responsiveness to regulatory change.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:

Regulatory Intelligence

• Develop, maintain, and continuously improve a 50-state regulatory monitoring system covering all applicable state-level approval requirements for HCOE healthcare programs, including but not limited to: BSN Pre-Licensure, Associate Degree Nursing (ADN), LPN, Radiologic Technology, Respiratory Therapy, and Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) programs.

• Attend regulatory agency hearings, public comment sessions, or stakeholder convenings as directed by the ADO; prepare pre-meeting briefings and post-meeting summaries.

• Maintain an ongoing regulatory change log and issue tracker with status, owner, deadline, and risk level for each open item across all program types.

• Track state-specific application requirements, processing timelines, and approval status for all pending or in-progress program expansions across the full HCOE portfolio.

Dashboard Development & Data Reporting

• Design, build, and maintain interactive dashboards and reports that provide real-time visibility into regulatory status, state approval progress, clinical placement data, and accreditation timelines across all HCOE programs.

• Develop and own program-specific State Approval Trackers as living operational tools — updating status categories, notes, and risk flags on a defined cadence. Produce standardized and ad hoc reports for multiple stakeholder audiences, including the ADO, Dean, program directors, Legal/Risk, Portfolio Strategy, and C-suite leadership.

• Build and maintain a clinical placement data repository tracking site-level affiliation agreement status clinical hours capacity, and geographic footprint across all programs.

• Develop reporting pipelines that integrate data from multiple sources (Smartsheet, SharePoint, OneDrive, external agency websites) into cohesive operational views.

• Ensure all dashboards and trackers include version control, data source citations, and last-updated timestamps for audit readiness.

Accreditation and Clinical Operations Data Support

• Support the maintenance of an accreditation standards mapping library that cross-references applicable standards to program-level evidence, documentation, and responsible owners within the academic units.

• Support academic unit leads in maintaining accreditation cycle timelines, self-study due dates, site visit windows, and annual report deadlines across all accredited HCOE programs.

• Assist in organizing and compiling supporting evidence and data sets required for accreditation reports, site visit preparation, and interim monitoring submissions as directed.

• Support the ADO and academic unit stakeholders in maintaining clear documentation distinguishing HCOE program-level approval status from institutional-level regulatory approval status across reporting contexts.

• Provide data and reporting infrastructure that enables academic units at Capella and Strayer to meet their respective accreditation reporting obligations with accurate, readily retrievable information.

• Develop and maintain a library of templated reports tailored to distinct stakeholder groups: operational summaries for the ADO, executive briefings for C-suite, program-level detail for directors, and compliance-focused summaries for Legal/Risk.

• Prepare presentation-ready data outputs (slides, formatted tables).

Job Skills

• Consultation: Serve as a university consultant to internal and external partners by providing data ready reports, tools and trackers.

• Collaboration: Partner with university and system leaders to integrate academic priorities with institutional and system‑wide goals.

• Data Visualization: Translate complex regulatory and compliance data into clear, audience-appropriate formats: executive summaries, status tables, heatmaps, gap analyses, and risk matrices.

• Synthesis of Data: Able to synthesize large inputs of data and turn into concise documents for a broad audience.

• Strong prioritization skills that are able to balance competing high priority projects.

• High degree of self-direction and comfort operating in a matrixed, remote-first environment.

• Exceptional attention to detail and accuracy, particularly in regulatory tracking and compliance documentation.

• Excellent communication skills and ability to convey complex issues in a concise and clear manner.

• Displayed business acumen and enterprise awareness.

Work Experience

• Minimum 3–5 years of professional experience in a regulatory, compliance, accreditation, academic operations, or healthcare data analyst role required.

• Demonstrated experience building and maintaining dashboards, trackers, or reporting tools strongly preferred (Excel, Smartsheet, Power BI, Tableau, or equivalent).

• Experience working in higher education, healthcare regulation, or a multi-site/multi-state compliance environment strongly preferred.

• Familiarity with nursing education and allied health regulatory frameworks, including state board of nursing and programmatic accreditation approval processes, preferred.

• Record of working with cross-functional teams with high matrix reporting structure.

Education

• Bachelor's degree required in health sciences, public health, healthcare administration, information science, data analytics, or a closely related field.

• Master's degree preferred.

Other

• Must be able to travel up to 10% of the time.

• Must be able to lift 25 lbs.

• Typical office setting.

• Mobility within the office including movement from floor to floor.

• Travel via plane, car, and metro may be required to perform this job.

• Must be able to work more than 40 hours per week when business needs warrant.

• Access information using a computer.

• Effectively communicate, both up and down the management chain.

• Effectively cope with stressful situations.

• Strong mental acuity.

• Regular, dependable attendance and punctuality are essential functions of this job.

• Other essential functions and marginal job functions are subject to modification.

Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States. Visa sponsorship is not available for this position.

$71,500.00 - $78,000.00 is the expected starting pay for this position. This offer is based on current budgetary guidelines and the additional factors outlined below.

$55,900.00 - $84,000.00 - Salary

If you require reasonable accommodations to complete our application process, please contact our Human Resources Department at View email address on click.appcast.io.