Position Vacancy - Assistant Director, Straus Center for Young Children and Families

• Employing a range of mixed-method research designs to both capture early childhood programming in action and better understand their effects on young children;
• Implementing a strengths-based approach to engage practitioners, children, parents/guardians, and community members in participatory, equity-focused research projects that incorporate their important perspectives and voices in practice improvement efforts;
• Recognizing and valuing children’s and families’ diversities as central to high-quality early care and education practices; and
• Effectively communicating research on approaches, models, and strategies that positively impact young children, their families, and their communities.

Core Responsibilities

• Co-designing research projects
• Co-authoring funding proposals
• Coordinating with internal and external research project stakeholders
• Managing data collection and integrity procedures
• Collaboratively analyzing data
• Working collaboratively to disseminate research findings to a range of audiences (e.g., funders, scholars, practitioners, policy makers, lay people, etc.)
• Assisting with research syntheses and developing translational documents for this same audience range
• Other duties as needed (e.g., assisting in the recruitment, training, and supervision of student research assistants)

Required Qualifications

• Masters degree, with at least two years of research experience, from an accredited research-intensive university in early childhood education, education policy, sociology of education, educational psychology, community psychology, social work, or a related field
• Strong methodological (i.e. both theoretical and technical) background in inferential statistics and understanding of the interplay between so-called quantitative and qualitative methods
• Facility with one or more statistical packages (e.g., SPSS, Stata, SAS, R, etc.)
• Strong project management (e.g., budgeting, tracking timelines, coordinating with internal and external partners, etc.)
• Ability to exercise initiative to resolve complex, non-routine research-practice dilemmas
• Outstanding verbal and written communication skills
• Demonstrated record of scholarly habits of mind and activity in line with the position’s core responsibilities

Desired Qualifications

• Doctoral degree from an accredited research university
• Experience with multilevel modeling
• Bi- or multi-lingual proficiency
• Familiarity with the body of theories commonly referred to as Critical Theory
• Working knowledge of other data analysis and research-relevant applications (e.g., NVivo, Dedoose, ArcGIS, Asana, Access, etc.)
• An articulated inter- or trans-disciplinary perspective
• Some experience teaching with adults and/or working with children, youth, families, and/or community groups