Assistant Director, Academic Success Center

Provide dynamic leadership and assist with overseeing daily operations of the Academic Success Center, including participating in strategic planning and management of personnel, policy issues, training, budget, and staffing. 

Job Responsibilities

Assistant Director:

• Provide dynamic leadership and assist with overseeing daily operations of the Academic Success Center, including participating in strategic planning and management of personnel, policy issues, training, budget, and staffing.


• Effectively create, implement and execute strategy in order to support retention efforts in alignment with the university strategic plan and to meet university goals. This includes helping to develop retention strategies to proactively track and support at-risk students (such as EMPOWER students), assessing analytics and predictive modeling, and coordinating with academic and administrative departments across campus regarding academic advising, retention, and student success.


• Oversee training and onboarding of new employees, including designing a comprehensive training program for new employees and current staff. This also includes helping to maintain the ASC and Academic Advising Canvas courses and helping to ensure training is effectively utilized.


• Serve as a member of the CARE team and a liaison between Student Life and the Academic Success Center.


• Collaborate and continue to build and maintain relationships with campus partners, including the Registrar’s Office, Bison One Stop, Financial Aid, Career Services, Office of Well-Being, and Academic Departments, including department chairs and faculty.


• Serve as academic success coach and advisor for certain populations of students and perform the duties listed below.

Academic Success Coach:

• Provide guidance, advice, and direction to support and retain a specifically assigned group of students as they navigate the higher education landscape at Lipscomb University.


• Serve as the academic advisor to assigned advisees supporting them as they define and develop realistic educational and degree plans through course schedule planning for each semester and summer school, if appropriate.


• Mentor students academically as they consider possible majors, manage academic expectations, and deal with challenges as they orient to and manage college life.


• Proactively contact and be available for students on a regular basis.


• Connect with assigned students during the summer and with assigned advisees during new student orientation to begin building relationships as student orient to college.


• Consult regularly with faculty colleagues in order to have up-to-date information on curriculum and degree plans. The information provided to students during advising interactions is expected to be accurate and follow the academic policies set by faculty. The Academic Success Advisor/Coach should understand and provide rationale for institutional policies, procedures, and requirements.


• Utilize dashboard metrics produced by predictive analytics technology in order to support students in an informed way regarding their needs to be academically successful.


• Meet at least once each semester with students to:  
  
  
  
  • Advise students regarding policies, procedures, registration, degree progression, and payment options
  
  
  • Maintain ongoing communication with students, focusing most heavily on students identified as being at risk 
  
  
  • Plan for the upcoming semester
  
  
  • Review and revise long-range academic program schedules. Academic Success Coaches should assist students in planning a program that is consistent with their abilities and interests.
  
  
  • Review the progress towards completing the proposed academic program. Discuss grades, milestones, and success markers. 
  
  
  • Discuss student wellbeing and satisfaction. 
  
  
  • Help to remove barriers to student persistence and success
  
  
  
  


• Follow-up with students on any report of potential barriers to student success. Examples could be, holds placed on student accounts, notice of poor midterm grades, notice of poor class attendance, incomplete grades from previous semester(s), etc. Special attention should be paid to students who are most at risk of not succeeding.


• Maintain an up-to-date advising portfolio with a summary record of performance to date (grade reports, transcripts, requirements completed, advising agreements, etc.)


• Connect students to other institutional resources in the Academic Success Center and elsewhere when necessary. (e.g. faculty, tutoring, the Career Development Office, the Counseling Center, Financial Aid, Bison One Stop, etc.)