Assistant Project Scientist

Position Description:

The Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies is hiring three Assistant Project Scientists for the 2025-2026 academic year to work with the Sexual Health Exploration Project.

The project, active since 2022 and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and VCU Institute for Research on Behavioral and Emotional Health, has brought together community members, students, scholars, policymakers and field experts to learn as much as possible about sexual health and wellbeing. Using knowledge gained from focus groups, cognitive and in-depth interviewing, and survey data, the multidisciplinary research team continues to measure and assess the breadth and depth of the sexuality prism, including sexual beliefs, desires, patterns of behaviors, and identities, with a focus on assets such as identity pride, community consciousness, self-esteem, affirmative models of consent, aspects of pleasure (including feelings, behaviors and physical outcomes), and affirmative health behaviors and health-related outcomes. Together-and, with the goal of establishing a sustainable sexual health research center/institute-the team will inform meaningful and comprehensive community level sexual health initiatives, state and/or federal level sexual health education policies, and institutional/grant-funder priorities for sexual health.

Position Responsibilities:

Assistant Project Scientists will join a growing team, with Founding Director Dr. B. Ethan Coston (supervisor), seven former co-Directors (who rotate into positions yearly), a 10-member Community Steering Committee, and more than 20 volunteers and collaborators from universities and non-profits across the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

Responsibilities will depend on which “track” within the project the candidates want to be involved in (education, research, and/or advocacy and public engagement), and might include:

• Receiving training on responsible and ethical research procedures (CITI) as well as qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques (focus groups, interviews, surveys, psychometric assessment, meta-reviews, and content/thematic analysis);
• Assisting in securing Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for survey data collection;
• Grant writing with the research team;
• Editing special issues of journals and/or edited volumes in sexual health;
• Contributing to peer-reviewed journal publications;
• Writing op-eds or other public-facing articles;
• Designing digital health literacy campaigns, stylized reports, and other graphic representations that share project work and research findings;
• Coordinating and running the project’s social media pages;
• Piloting a regular monthly project newsletter (and working with the project’s members to fill the content);
• Planning and piloting educational workshops, trainings, webinars, and/or an unconference;
• Submitting to and/or attending academic and community-based conferences;
• Designing curricular modules for undergraduate, graduate, pre-professional and/or continuing education credit;
• and more!

We intend to offer extensive interpersonal professional development and resource support to our team members, including:

• Getting to know you, your academic and personal interests and goals, and working with you directly to explore research project tasks that you are passionate about and will directly benefit your future;
• Direct resource support to complete methodological and content-based trainings of interest;
• Direct resource support to attend a conference/present on the research project;
• One-on-one support in leveraging this research experience on resumes, cover letters, job and graduate school applications;
• and, connecting you to scholars, organizations, and community-based resources locally, regionally, and nationally.
  

Required Qualifications:

• Must be a student in the U.S. currently enrolled in a bachelor's, master's or doctoral-level program;
• A passion for sex(uality), 2SLGBTQIA+ people and lives, sexual health and wellbeing, and/or innovative public health approaches to population health improvement;
• A general sense of why and/or how this particular research assistantship position will benefit them in their work, school, and/or life moving forward;
• The training and prior experience (educational, work-related, or self-study) necessary to be successful in at least one of the project’s three tracks/teams (research, education, or advocacy and public engagement).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Rising junior or senior or graduate student;
• Relevant coursework in Gender and Women’s Studies, Sociology, Psychology, or Public Health;
• Prior experience in collaborative teams
• Prior experience with remote/virtual work;
• Prior experience in graphic design, art, and/or digital media (for the advocacy and public engagement track/team);
• Prior experience in research and/or data analysis (for the research track/team);
• Prior experience in education, mentoring, and/or training (for the education track/team).

Additional information:

These positions will be entirely remote. The hourly rate of pay is $20, and these positions allow for up to 5 hours of work per week (no more than 20 hours of work per month). Positions have a start date of September 15, 2025 and will conclude on May 15, 2026 unless further funding is secured. Review of applications will begin on August 1, with interviews being held the week of August 4-8. Reference checks for finalists will happen the week of August 11-14. Offers to top candidates will go out no later than August 15, and candidates should be ready to submit hiring paperwork as soon as possible after accepting an offer. Applications submitted after July 31st are not guaranteed to be reviewed.

You must indicate in your Cover Letter if you would like to be considered for a role with our research (1), education (2), or advocacy and public engagement (3) team. If you are open to any placement, you must describe your skills, training, and interests as they apply to each team within that Cover Letter. Your application will not be considered unless you submit this Cover Letter and discuss how/why you feel you are a good candidate (i.e. how you meet or exceed the minimum qualifications), and some initial ideas about how you might contribute to the ongoing work on the project in your track/team area. A resume/CV should also be attached.

If you have any questions before applying, you can reach out to the project's Founding Director: B. Ethan Coston at bmcoston@vcu.edu. https://www.sexplorationproject.com/.

VCU students should apply in Handshake: https://vcu.joinhandshake.com/jobs/10014853/share_preview. Position ID: 10014853, Position Title: Assistant Project Scientist, Employer Name: VCU College of Humanities & Sciences