Job Description
About The Organization:
Let’s Get Ready (LGR) envisions a future when students from all socioeconomic backgrounds have the support they need to attain a college education. Through an innovative program model that stands apart from other college access and success programs, LGR serves more than 13,000 students annually from Philadelphia to Maine, and engages more than 150 college students as paid near-peer coaches, most of whom are former participants in the program. There is no nomination process or academic requirements for participation in Let’s Get Ready programs. Any student who expresses interest is eligible for services, with students from low-income backgrounds or who are first-generation-to-college given priority. Overall, 89% of LGR students are students of color, 80% are eligible for free or reduced price lunch, and 71% are the first in their family to attend college. All components of the organization’s programs are designed with this population and the requisite cultural competence in mind.
To learn more about LGR’s program model and impact, please see our latest Impact Report.
Let’s Get Ready has been in operation for nearly 25 years; the organization has an annual budget of $3 million and a staff of 18, who work remotely but have access to office spaces in New York City and Boston. Traditionally we have served students in our Northeast footprint - from Pennsylvania to Maine - but with the recent pivot toward a fully virtual program model we now serve students in 22 states across the country. We have just launched a Strategic Plan outlining a roadmap for growth and impact, including significant increases in students served and growing the team of full-time staff to 29. We aim to serve 25,000 students annually by 2025, which will almost double the number of students served on an annual basis. These increases will include students in our existing hubs: Greater Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia, as well as significant growth in students from rural communities, and other geographies across the country. We are simultaneously focused on increasing the revenue, visibility and focus on values necessary to support this future growth.
For more information, visit www.letsgetready.org
About The Position:
The Program Manager ensures that the students served by our lighter-touch, two-way texting program (Core) have the high quality support and resources they need as they navigate the complicated college process. The number of students in this program is expected to nearly double over the next few years to reach 25,000 by 2025. The Program Manager will practice remote management of part-time college student coaches who respond to student text messages, providing personalized support and directing students to the right resources. The Program Manager is joining the LGR team at an exciting and critical moment in the evolution of the LGR Core program, and we are seeking a Program Manager who can juggle the daily operations of managing the Core program as well as help codify the systems and processes the program will need moving forward.
The Program Manager reports to the Director of College Success with frequent interaction and collaboration across program teams.
Specific responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
Coach management (40%)
- Recruit, hire, train and support Core Coaches
- Collaborate with Program Design team to update existing training resources to meet the skill development needs of coaches in the Core program
- Provide coverage for coach PTO, including interacting with students directly by responding to messages
Program Quality Control (30%)
- Monitor message quality and provide ongoing feedback and quality assurance
- Follow and continue to develop processes for responding to escalated messages (including documenting the situation & correspondence, working with coach and Director of Success, and communicating directly with student)
- Contribute to a library of exemplar text exchanges for learning and storytelling
- Assist in the development and refinement of new programmatic interventions to ensure all students persist
Platform Operations (10%)
- Upload all curriculum campaigns, written by the national team to texting platform
- Work with Mainstay lead to build skills in leveraging Mainstay technology
Data management and tracking (20%)
- Monitor core student engagement data and ensure that we are meeting our goals for student engagement, program recruitment, retention and impact.
- Monitor campaign performance
- Track qualitative trends to share with curriculum team
- Observe core student survey results for learning and improvement
- Maintain system for reassigning students to new cohorts based on changing pathways
- Other assignments, as needed
Required Skills/Abilities:
Initiative, Personal Development, Analytical thinking, Ownership
- Identifies problems and acts to prevent and solve them
- Notices trends and outliers in the data, makes observations about what they notice in the data and can make inferences
- Adheres to improvement standards (constructive feedback) to reduce errors, omissions, and oversights
- Performs tasks according to quality and output standards
Communication, Collaboration, Support, Leadership
- Explains the immediate context of the situation, asks questions with follow-ups, and solicits advice prior to taking action
- Identifies needs for resources to effectively support current initiatives, services and offerings
- Is able to work effectively with any type of individual (across cultures and differences)
- Open to learning from those with more experience
Adaptability, Strategic Planning, Challenge the Process, Decision Making
- Recognize when decisions are outside of their scope and seek assistance
- Effective time management skills
- Constructively expresses own point of view or concerns
- Able to readily respond to challenges within scope of work
Education and Experience:
- Bachelor’s degree preferred
- A genuine passion for, knowledge of, and commitment to LGR’s mission
- Enjoys leveraging data and technology to support student success
- Related work experience including college access or success direct student advising or people/project management experience
- Comfort working within an evolving remote program model
- Demonstrates a solutions-oriented approach, an enthusiastic response to challenges, and flexibility and adaptability in a changing organization
- Excellent written and oral communication, organizational and interpersonal skills
- Proven project and/or people management skills
- Experience with Google Mail/Docs, and Word, Excel, Powerpoint