Research Program Manager

Job Details

Sub Department: College of Engineering

Michigan Technological University is an R1 technological research university founded in 1885 in Houghton. Our rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's scenic Upper Peninsula and is home to nearly 7,500 students from more than 60 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 185 undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Research focus areas include defense, health, energy, automotive, environment, and aerospace.

The area’s waters, forests, and snowfall support year-round recreation, including skiing, snowboarding, hiking, biking, and paddling. The University is an integral part of the region, supported by a friendly and welcoming community that takes pride in being a true college town. We embrace our size, climate, sense of adventure, and originality.

Summary

Michigan Technological University is seeking a Research Program Manager for our College of Engineering Department. The Program Manager supports the smooth operations of externally funded student cohorts within the College and graduate recruiting. They are responsible for project management, overseeing projects by handling planning, scheduling, budgeting, resource allocation, and stakeholder communication while ensuring workflows align with strategic goals, tracking progress, and resolving issues to keep projects on time and within scope. Key duties include managing project execution, planning events, monitoring budgets, providing support for student participants, reporting performance, supporting process improvements, and coordinating cross-functional teams to achieve project objectives.

Responsibilities and Essential Duties

1. Provide administrative support for daily functions for project management including monitoring timelines, communication, and resource management.
2. Manage budgets and resources: monitor project budgets, reconcile expenses, process invoice payments, process purchase requisitions, forecast expenses
3. Communication & reporting: coordinate meetings, distribute agendas, document minutes, provide status updates to stakeholders and leadership. Manage email accounts and website updates; compose routine correspondence; draft replies to non-routine inquiries. Provide excellent customer service to a diverse population of internal and external students and stakeholders.
4. Event Planning and management: Support planning of events on Michigan Tech’s campus, as well as at other locations around the US and internationally. Make reservations for meeting and guest rooms. Make international and domestic travel reservations for groups of students and faculty. Organize field trips and activities for students.
5. Workflow & process improvements: Independently organize, prioritize, and manage multiple duties for multiple projects and determine actions needed to ensure accurate, timely, and efficient completion of tasks on a daily basis. Independently resolve problems and handle projects with little or no supervision. Recognize when an issue needs to be directed to specific personnel for resolution. Commit to learning about continuous improvement strategies and apply them to everyday work. Actively engage in University continuous improvement initiatives.
6. Provide support for program assessment and evaluation, such as managing online surveys and coordinating with external vendors providing assessment and evaluation services.
7. Support coordination and delivery of programming for cohorts of students.
8. Other duties as assigned
9. Commit to learning about continuous improvement strategies and applying them to everyday work. Actively engage in University continuous improvement initiatives.
10. Apply safety-related knowledge, skills, and practices to everyday work.

Required Education, Certifications, Licensures

• High school diploma, or an equivalent combination of education and experience for which comparable knowledge and abilities can be required.

Required Experience

• Prior experience in clerical or administrative support.
• Two years experience using personal computers and basic software packages such as Microsoft Office Suite and Google Suite.
• Prior experience monitoring budgets.

Desirable Education and/or Experience

• Bachelor’s degree, or an equivalent combination of education and experience from which comparable knowledge and abilities can be acquired.
• Prior experience planning events and travel.
• Experience working in higher education.
• Experience managing projects.
• Experience monitoring budgets, reconciling expenses, and forecasting expenses.

Required Knowledge, Skills, and/or Abilities

• Excellent interpersonal, customer service and oral/written communication skills.
• Experience reading and interpreting financial information and documents, processing, reconciling, and reporting financial transactions.
• Demonstrated ability to handle multiple tasks with attention to detail and a high degree of accuracy.
• Demonstrated ability to work independently to investigate and take the initiative to solve complex problems.
• Demonstrated ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in all units of measure using whole numbers, fractions and decimals.
• Demonstrated ability to work as a member of a team and contribute to the overall smooth operation of a service environment.
• Demonstrated commitment to contribute to a safe work environment.
• Demonstrated ability and commitment to engage in continuous improvement practices.

Desirable Knowledge, Skills, and/or Abilities

• Demonstrated experience using intermediate and advanced features of Microsoft Office Suite for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations and intermediate and advanced features of the Google Suite including Forms.
• Proficiency communicating in Spanish.

Work Environment and/or Physical Demands

WORK ENVIRONMENT: The work environment characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. The noise level in the work environment is usually low to moderate.

Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) % (1=100%)
1

FLSA Status
Exempt

Appointment Term
12 months

Pay Rate/Salary
The minimum salary for this position is $45,000. The final salary will depend on experience and qualifications.

Title of Position Supervisor
Associate Dean of Graduate and Online Education

Posting Type
Internal & External

Dependent on Funding
No