Engagement Advisor

Job Category

Job Profile

Job Title

Department

Compensation Range

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Posting End Date

Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the Posting End Date.

Job End Date

At UBC, we believe that attracting and sustaining a diverse workforce is key to the successful pursuit of excellence in research, innovation, and learning for all faculty, staff and students. Our commitment to employment equity helps achieve inclusion and fairness, brings rich diversity to UBC as a workplace, and creates the necessary conditions for a rewarding career.

Job Summary

The Centre for Community Engaged Learning (CCEL) is part of an ecosystem at UBC working to move UBC’s university-wide priority themes of innovation, collaboration and inclusion into concrete practices and activities. As a resource-hub for community engaged learning at UBC, CCEL strives to enhance the academic work of students and faculty, through knowledge exchange, and collective learning and action with local community organizations.

CCEL envisions a just, sustainable and connected community. It contributes to this by connecting community with UBC faculty and students to work on issues that impact society today. The unit works closely with faculty and staff across the university to integrate community engaged learning (CEL), including Community Service Learning and Community-Based Research, into academic courses and to ensure that meaningful community engaged learning opportunities are available outside the context of coursework. At the same time, CCEL works with diverse community organizations, including non-profit organizations and public schools, to contribute to social impact events and to engage students in short-term community-based projects that contribute to student learning and the achievement of community-identified goals

The Engagement Advisor works closely with CCEL staff to augment support for faculty members seeking to integrate Social Impact Lab (SIL) methodology, a structured, interdisciplinary, and systems-based approach to community-engaged learning, into courses. The incumber will also undertake efforts to foster university-community relationships for the purposes of SIL programming and complementary initiatives. Social impact labs are designed to bring students, faculty, and community partners together to explore the root causes of complex societal challenges and co-create meaningful, real-time responses. They emphasize collaboration, critical reflection, and long-term, reciprocal partnerships that go beyond one-off community placements.

The role is designed to expand CCEL’s curricular capacity by developing lab-based approaches that foreground systems thinking, co-creation, and long-term community-academic partnerships. Specifically, the incumbent will provide specialized leadership and support for integrating the Social Impact Lab methodology into academic courses; help faculty embed more structured, interdisciplinary, and equity-informed models of community engagement into their teaching; cultivate sustained, thematic, and trust-based partnerships with community organizations aligned with key societal issues; and identify and develop resources;

The Advisor explores the underpinning causes and contributors to entrenched societal issues; engaging those directly impacted by or actively working within the system to create change, in an effort to create space for dialogue between university educators and community partners. The Advisor will lead on the conceptualization and development of SIL educational activities, in partnership with faculty and the CCEL Officer team. Activities may include, but are not limited to, a focus on empowering stakeholders by increasing individual’s awareness of their agency, identifying pathways for collective impact through explicitly addressing structural inequities and injustice, engaging in community asset mapping, or brainstorming actions that can facilitate policy, system, and structural change with the broad goal of co-creating knowledge with communities to address the societal issue and/or identifying actions that will enable a collective response to issues in real-time. This role advances CCEL’s strategic goals by supporting institutional innovation in engaged learning, while strengthening academic-community partnerships and contributing to more impactful student and faculty experiences.

The Advisor is also responsible for leading and managing Student Directed Seminars, a program that provides upper-year undergraduate students the opportunity to propose, coordinate, and lead their own 3-credit course. This will include providing mentorship, instruction, and guidance to potential and existing student coordinators; liaising with faculty and the Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, and assisting with seminar evaluation.

Organizational Status
The Engagement Advisor reports to the Centre's Director, UBC-CCEL. The Advisor works independently, under general direction. The position works with program and student staff, often in a supervisory capacity, on programming and operations and is responsible for developing, delivering and evaluating programming. The Advisor is a member of the cross-functional UBC-CCEL team, a unit within the Student Engagement portfolio led by the Office of the Vice-President, Students. The incumbent will interact closely with UBC students, as well as UBC units, community partner organizations, and other VP Student staff.

Work Performed

Consequence of Error/Judgement
Must exercise tact and diplomacy when interacting with a diverse range of internal and external stakeholders, including: UBC senior administrators, staff, students, alumni, faculty, staff within community organizations, individual community members, and others in external educational institutions and professional associations. UBC's community engagement activities have a high profile in the community and engage program participants in situations that may be new. Must be attentive to risk management in all situations; must be aware of the need to minimize risk to participants and maximize the perceived and actual sensitivity of programs/initiatives and the university to community issues. As the department is handling confidential information, must understand and respect the principles of confidentiality. Errors in judgment or the disclosure of confidential information could have very public consequences, affecting the reputation of the Centre for Community Engaged Learning and/or resulting in embarrassment to the University of British Columbia and its senior administration.

Supervision Received

This position works under the direction of the Director, UBC Centre for Community Engaged Learning and according to established objectives. The incumbent works independently, with initiative and considerable autonomy. Recommendations are normally accepted as accurate and feasible. Work is reviewed for achievement of university goals, and soundness of advice and judgment.

Supervision Given

As required, responsible for supervision of program and administrative staff, part-time student assistants, student leaders and volunteers. Participates in hiring and/or selection of paid staff, student assistants/leaders, and volunteers as required.

Minimum Qualifications
Undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline. Minimum of three to four years of related experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

• Willingness to respect diverse perspectives, including perspectives in conflict with one’s own

Preferred Qualifications