Director of Content and User Experience Strategy

Towson University (TU) has earned distinction as both a top-100 public university and one of the nation's great colleges to work for. Located north of Baltimore, TU currently enrolls over 19,000 students and is the second-largest university in the prestigious University System of Maryland. Towson University fosters a climate that is grounded in respect to cultivating the intellectual and personal growth of the entire university community.

The Director of Content and UX Strategy provides both strategic leadership and hands-on oversight of Towson University's web content and user experience operations. Reporting to the Assistant Vice President for Digital Strategy, the Director supervises a team of content strategists and a UX specialist to lead the integration of content strategy and UX practice across the TU website. The role drives the quality, clarity, and usability of the university's digital presence — with a specific focus on high-value pages, primary audiences, and key user journeys.

Responsibilities and Duties

1. Lead content and UX strategy for the university website:
   • Provide strategic direction and hands-on content oversight for TU's highest-value webpages, including top-level landing pages, enrollment and admissions content, and key digital marketing campaign pages.
   • Serve as team lead for redesign and continuous improvement projects for TU websites, web sections and microsites.
   • Advise on strategy and messaging based on insights drawn from content inventories, site audits, competitive assessments, user testing, and web analytics.
   • Guide content development in alignment with information architecture, user experience, and accessibility standards. Set and enforce web editorial style and tone. Identify and recommend appropriate content types and formats.
   • Translate UX best practices and research findings into actionable content and structural recommendations; collaborate with the Information Architect to ensure content and navigation serve user mental models.
   • Develop relationships with stakeholders and leaders across the university to evangelize content strategy and UX practices that serve both website users and the university's institutional goals.
2. Provide strategic leadership and editorial guidance to TU web publishers:
   • Work with web publishers to ensure content is treated as a strategic asset that serves users above all else.
   • Guide the development of content to ensure editorial and brand integrity and adherence to web standards.
   • Ensure that site content reflects the university's commitment to accessibility, plain language, and diversity.
   • Apply UX writing principles across editorial guidance — including clarity, scannability, and task-oriented language — to improve content usability for distributed editors.
   • Stay current with external trends in content strategy and UX to continuously improve the university's content publishing operation.
3. Oversee content publishing processes and editorial workflows:
   • Manage page publishing processes and editorial workflows within the university's CMS.
   • Collaborate with Digital Strategy leadership to establish and enforce content governance standards, including document management and PDF accessibility workflows.
4. Manage content and storytelling strategy for the Towson University home page, working with writers, photographers and videographers to ensure the content they develop for the homepage is timely and audience-centered.

Qualifications and Skills

• Bachelor's degree with a minimum 7 years of experience working in content strategy, UX, or a closely related discipline for enterprise-level websites, with at least 2 years leading institutional content strategy and/or UX practice.
• Proven ability to practice both content strategy and UX — and understand the interrelated nature of them — including writing, editing, content modeling, wireframing, usability testing and research synthesis.
• Experience working in a specialized web team alongside professionals in information architecture, digital marketing, design, and/or front-end development.
• Demonstrated ability to envision big-picture strategy while executing day-to-day content and UX work.
• Ability to manage relationships at all levels of the organization, keeping decisions user-centered while remaining service-oriented and empathetic to the diverse needs of many stakeholders.
• Exceptional organization, project management, writing, and plain-language editing skills.
• Experience administering content management systems in a WYSIWYG interface, with a working knowledge of the underlying front-end code (HTML/CSS) of rendered webpages.
• Working knowledge of accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1 AA) as they apply to both content and user experience.

Preferred Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Previous higher education experience desired but not required.
• Previous supervisory experience desired but not required.
• Previous experience with agile, lean UX, and content ops desired but not required.

Salary and Benefits

Salary at $110,000-$116,000 annually and full University benefits include 22 days of annual leave, up to 17 holidays, personal and sick days; excellent health, life, and retirement plans; and tuition remission. To learn more about our benefits, click here. TU also offers a variety of great perks and discounts, which can be found here.

This position will be open for a minimum of 14 days. A cover letter and resume with your online application is required.