University Innovation Alliance Fellow

Position Summary:

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a member of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA), a national consortium of large public research universities working together to improve graduation outcomes and decrease time to degree for students across the socioeconomic spectrum, particularly low-income students, first-generation students, and underrepresented students. The UIA is designed, organized, and led by our 17 member institutions’ presidents and chancellors. Together, we draw from every region in the country and span the spectrum of U. S. public research universities, from emergent institutions to land grant universities and state flagships.

UIA Fellowship Program Overview:

The University Innovation Alliance Fellowship is a full-time, paid 12-month university leadership development program that places top-tier early-career professionals with Alliance member institutions. Fellows engage in critical work to support member institutions to identify new solutions, scale proven innovations, and communicate and diffuse outcomes - ultimately helping more students have access to and graduate with a high quality, bachelor’s degree. The Fellowship provides a collaborative, fast-paced, and challenging experience coupled with training in cutting edge transferable skills, such as Process Mapping, Design Thinking, and pressing leadership issues in higher education. As a Fellow, you will gain the unique networking opportunities of some of the most innovative public institutions nationwide to support your launch into a high-level university leadership career.

UIA Fellows come with a variety of professional and educational backgrounds. What they have in common is strong interpersonal acumen to build community at VCU to solve the most pressing public higher education student success problem facing our nation today - educational attainment and the economic prospects of all students regardless of their background.

Core Responsibilities:

As a UIA Fellow, you have the opportunity to gain full-time experience supporting high-yield projects that are impactful to VCU and critical to the scaling mission of the Alliance. You will work on a manageable scope of work under the supervision of experienced higher education leaders. You will be charged to complete projects that enhance institutional capacity based on the needs of VCU. Fellows may engage in such work as policy research, assessment, data analytics, event planning, memo and proposal writing, and program enrichment analysis.

Reporting to the university’s UIA liaisons and the UIA Director of the Fellows Program, the next UIA Fellow at VCU will have the opportunity to shepherd UIA scale projects related to National Institute for Student Success (NISS) implementation, enrollment planning implementation, predictive analytics, proactive advising, strategic financial interventions, special projects, and/or college to career efforts. The UIA fellow also will be engaged in university-directed student success initiatives. Additional engagement opportunities include being trained in and leveraging skills in process mapping and design thinking to help improve the likelihood of student success for undergraduates who identify as first-generation college students, from low-income households/communities, and/or students from broad and varied populations. This will include the development of a scalable student success project, moving from diagnosis of a problem through project completion.

VCU’s UIA Fellow will be exposed to senior leaders in student success work at VCU, including the offices of: Strategic Enrollment Management and Student Success, Academic Affairs, Provost Office, Schools and Colleges, and Student Affairs; their decision making; and how student success initiatives and projects are conceptualized, launched, and managed over time. The UIA fellow, in collaboration with other partners, will work to embed and institutionalize evidence-based strategies into extant initiatives and programs designed to advance the university toward its strategic Quest 2028 student success goals.

In addition to university-level efforts, each UIA Fellow will spend approximately 15 percent of her/his time supporting UIA central initiatives and helping to disseminate VCU’s collective learnings related to student centric innovation and scaling impactful student success initiatives.