Director – Honors Program

POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT

Title: Director, Honors Program

Location: Main Campus (Gainesville, FL)

Salary: Commensurate with training and experience

Timeline: Formal review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until a viable applicant pool is established.

You belong at a University that is Rising

The University of Florida, the flagship university of the state of Florida, is a top-tier research institution with a long history of training outstanding undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. UF is currently ranked #5 among U.S. public research universities by U.S. News and World Report.

The Office of Undergraduate Affairs seeks applications for the next Director for the Honors Program to elevate the stature of the University of Florida’s rising honors program.

The Opportunity

The Director of the UF Honors Program provides strategic vision; classroom and programmatic leadership and expertise; financial oversight; and administrative, day-to-day supervision and management of the UF Honors Program. The director will work collaboratively among an array of on- and off-campus partners, including administrators, faculty, staff, and students to shape continued implementation of a shared strategic vision for the program. The director will foster an inclusive environment for a diverse group of students, ensuring that students of color and other diverse backgrounds and identities can be supported and successful in the UF Honors Program and across campus.

The UF Honors Director oversees every aspect of the UF Honors curricular and co-curricular education, teaching, and learning experience. The director will create and sustain a UF Honors Program Steering Committee and a UF Honors Program Curriculum Committee to ensure consistent delivery of best practices of nationally top-ranked Honors programs. The director will establish and ensure highest standards of curricular and co-curricular experiences and will establish and regularly report results of outcomes assessments at the program and course levels.

The Director will be highly engaged with national Honors program organizations and will research and report on the most effective practices and emerging trends in Honors education. The director will participate in and encourage faculty and staff to participate in peer-reviewed publications and presentations to share UF’s successes and best practices with other Honors programs.

In addition to the Office of Undergraduate Affairs in the Provost’s Office, the director will collaborate closely with UF Enrollment Management in Honors student recruitment, admissions, and marketing. The Director partners closely with the Division of Student Life and UF Housing, and the director will be highly engaged in the transition of the UF Honors office and programming to the UF Honors Village. The UF Honors Director will also partner with UF Advancement in seeking, securing, and stewarding philanthropic giving that enriches the student experience in the UF Honors Program. The UF Honors Director is also expected to nurture strong partnerships with the leadership of UF Preview and UF Student Success.

The UF Honors Director must possess highly developed communication skills and an understanding of how a successful honors functions to enable successful collaboration across multiple areas with different operational missions. The director will have had leadership experience and can provide evidence of building consensus within a diverse community toward shared outcomes. The director will have experience in developing, maintaining, and monitoring a complex budget.

Successful candidate will be a highly collaborative, innovative, strategic thinkers who can cultivate and develop initiatives that challenge, grow, and support the highly talented students in the UF Honors Program. The director must be undergraduate student-centered and fully invested in and knowledgeable of the unique needs of high-achieving students who are admitted to this program, anticipating their leadership roles in society, and expecting their full participation in the Gator Community as leaders among their fellow undergraduate students. The UF Honors Director engages directly with students, serving as a model for Honors staff in supporting its program mission of “inspiring curiosity, intellectual daring, and creativity.” The UF Honors Director’s record of service must align with the UF Core Values. This position is open to both tenure and non-tenure track faculty.

Primary Responsibilities:

Managing Daily Operations of the UF Honors Program Office
- Supervises and manages daily operations of the UF Honors program office.
- Hires, supervises, and evaluates a team of UF Honors staff. Encourages staff in pursuing professional development opportunities.
- Develops, maintains, and regularly monitors the UF Honors program budget.
- Leads development and implementation of a communication plan that effectively informs students of needed information about the UF Honors program and builds community among the students. Communication methods include and are not limited to the UF Honors web site, Canvas, social media sites, etc.
Building, Implementing, Sustaining, and Communicating a Vision of the UF Honors Program
- Provides leadership among UF Honors staff and campus to shape a strategic vision for UF Honors as a top-ranked national program. Develops a strategic plan in collaboration with staff, campus, and external stakeholders that provides a sustained road map for excellence for the Program.
- Chairs a UF Honors Steering Committee, along with a Faculty co-chair, and prepares committee meeting minutes and reports. Collaborates with the UF Honors Steering Committee to establish a faculty professional development program.
- Serves as primary contact for UF Honors, representing the Program in various on- and off-campus capacities, including in the Advisory Council for Undergraduate Affairs, the University Curriculum and General Education Committees (as appropriate), and in state- and national-level meetings.
- Produces an annual report of UF Honors Program and student activities and successes and their alignment with the strategic plan of the program. Identifies areas in need of improvement with an accompanying plan of action.
- Participates regularly in UF and national professional development activities offered by UF and nationally.
Creating and Sustaining Innovative Curricular and Co-Curricular Experiences for UF Honors Students
- Creates and sustains standards for all UF Honors curricula. Partners with a UF Honors Curriculum Committee to ensure all courses meet the standards of UF Honors. Creates and implements an assessment framework for all UF Honors courses. Partners with the University Curriculum Committee and General Education Committee as appropriate.
- Engages in research and develops innovative approaches in teaching UF Honors curriculum.
- In partnership with Colleges and departments, recruits top UF faculty to teach Honors courses. Provides support and professional development resources for UF faculty teaching Honors courses, including collaboration with the UF Center for Teaching Excellence. Collects, analyzes, and reports data about UF Honors faculty professional development and successful best practices.
- Collaborates with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and University Registrar to schedule and encode UF Honors course sections.
Partnering with On- and Off-Campus Stakeholders
- Partners with Enrollment Management to establish each year a targeted admissions pool of students. Partners with Enrollment Management to provide critical participation in recruiting and marketing efforts.
- Partners and collaborates with the Center for Undergraduate Research in the Office of Undergraduate Affairs in planning and implementing components of the Undergraduate Research Scholars Program (URSP).
- Coordinates with UF Preview program leadership and UF Preview academic advising to ensure Honors students receive a high level of accurate and relevant advising and coaching during their UF Preview experience.
- Coordinates with UF Academic Advisors throughout colleges and departments to ensure seamless service to students. Ensures participation of UF Honors Advising in the post-advising session survey.
- Partners closely with UF Student Success to track progress of Honors students and connect students, when needed, to support resources, including tutoring, coaching, and peer mentoring. Likewise, encourages UF Honors students to serve as peer tutors and peer mentors through UF Student Success. Partners closely with the prestigious awards unit of UF Student Success to ensure that UF remains competitive in external scholarship recipients.
- Partners with UF Advancement and the designated UF Foundation development officer assigned to the Office of Undergraduate Affairs in fund-raising and stewardship activities on behalf of the UF Honors Program.
- Partners with the Lombardi and Stamps Scholars Program to recruit, select, and support the talented students who participate in this program.

Office of Undergraduate Affairs, Honors Program

The Office of Undergraduate Affairs strives to create a campus that will provide a transformative and model undergraduate experience through an effective and genuine balance between liberal education and professional preparation. Joining the Office of Undergraduate Affairs, the Director of the UF Honors Program will report directly to the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Affairs and will work collaboratively daily with other staff in Undergraduate Affairs and the Provost’s Office.

The Office of Undergraduate Affairs assists in the creation of nurturing, transformative, model on-campus and virtual learning environments for all undergraduate students through an effective balance between liberal education and professional preparation. The Office of Undergraduate Affairs collaborates with the campus community to ensure this goal is a collective one in common pursuit of dynamic undergraduate learning experiences that support the mission of the Office of the Provost and the University of Florida. To this end, staff in the Office of Undergraduate Affairs support university committees, oversee interdisciplinary curricula and programs, and monitor undergraduate degree requirements, aimed at maintaining connection and communication with administration, faculty, staff, and students; improving student persistence; furthering the university’s goals of excellence and its core values (https://president.ufl.edu/media/presidentufledu/documents/UF-Core-Values.pdf); and, ultimately, serving the undergraduate student.

The UF Honors Program is structured in two parts: the First-Year Honors Program (FHP) for first-year students and the University Honors Program (UHP) for upper-division students. At every level of the program, we provide tailored advising, opportunities for community-building and interdisciplinary engagement.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The University of Florida College of Medicine is committed to diversity, inclusion, and heath equity through the efforts of actively finding, developing, and including the best talent to support our vision of being “a premier institution focused on promoting health and alleviating human suffering through exceptional education, discovery, innovation and patient-centered health care of the highest quality.”

The University of Florida is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The University is committed to non-discrimination with respect to race, creed, color, religion, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, marital status, national origin, political opinions or affiliations, genetic information, and veteran status in all aspects of employment including recruitment, hiring, promotion, transfers, discipline, terminations, wage and salary administration, benefits, and training.

The University of Florida 

Located in Gainesville since 1906, The University of Florida (UF) has 16 colleges, a major academic health center, a championship winning athletic program, a top-ranked undergraduate online program and, in keeping with its land-grant mission, one of the nation’s most comprehensive agriculture and natural resources programs. All are based at the University’s 2,000-acre campus, joining its historic red-brick core with advanced facilities and preserved natural areas and connecting to adjacent innovation, commercial and residential districts.

UF has 55,000 students, 30,000 employees, 5,500 faculty members, a $5 billion annual budget and more than 140 mission-focused units across the state of Florida. It is the Sunshine State’s only member of the Association of American Universities comprising the nation’s 60 leading public and private research universities. More than 51,000 students have applied as freshmen for the 2021-22 academic year — a new record.

Several qualities distinguish UF among today’s leading public research universities. The first is its highly comprehensive breadth on a single campus, facilitating interdisciplinary collaboration among, for example, faculty within the adjacent colleges of journalism, engineering, and medicine. The second is its unwavering support from the state of Florida, which has endorsed UF’s drive to become one of the nation’s very best public research universities — supporting those efforts since 2013 with hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding to grow its faculty ranks by 500 members. UF’s third exceptional quality is its dynamism. Like Florida, the nation’s third-largest state and among the fastest-growing, UF is undergoing rapid transformation as it pursues the overarching aspiration to be “a premier university that the state, nation and world look to for leadership.”

The City of Gainesville

Gainesville (http://cityofgainesville.org) is home to Florida’s largest and oldest university, and so is one of the state’s centers of education, medicine, cultural events and athletics. The University of Florida and UF Health Shands Hospital are the leading employers in Gainesville and provide jobs for many residents of surrounding counties. Gainesville is also the largest city in Alachua County and is the county seat, with approximately 269,000 residents county-wide. It serves as the cultural, educational and commercial center for the north central Florida region. The city provides a full range of municipal services, including cultural and nature services and necessary administrative services to support these activities. Additionally, the city owns a regional transit system, a regional airport, and a 72-par championship golf course. Known for its preservation of historic buildings and the beauty of its natural surroundings, Gainesville’s numerous parks, museums and lakes provide entertainment to thousands of visitors. Because of its beautiful landscape and urban “forest,” Gainesville is one of the most attractive cities in Florida. The city is in a central location to both the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, providing easy access within a day’s drive to beaches, nature preserves, and water-based activities. Explore Gainesville in 60 Seconds.

Minimum Qualifications

A Ph.D. or Doctorate degree is required upon hire
At least 10 years of relevant experience

Preferred Qualifications

Experience supervising employees
Strong record of participating at the national level in a professional organization related to Honors students and programs, and knowledge of peer-reviewed literature and current best practices in Honors education is expected.
Strong leadership and planning skills
Strong problem-solving skills
Strong organizational, planning, and time management skills with the ability to manage multiple, competing priorities
Strong inter-personal and verbal communication skills and communicate effectively in writing
The ability to cultivate and sustain collegial relationships is critical to this position
Development of networks across the University and collaborate with diverse stakeholders; working to build consensus in a collaborative fashion
Ability to work independently and interdependently and able to establish and communicate a vision for the UF Honors Program
Prior knowledge of University of Florida policies and procedures
Demonstrated ability to drive innovative change
Strong written and verbal communication skills

Application Instructions

Candidates must apply online and should include a letter of interest outlining their qualifications and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion for this position and a current curriculum vitae.

Formal review of applications began January 30, 2023 and full consideration will be given to applications submitted by 11:59pm ET on Sunday February 12th, 2023. This position is open until filled.

DIRECTOR, HONORS PROGRAM FINALISTS:

If you have any questions or are unable to access a meeting or survey link, please reach out to Devan Brown, Talent Consultant at devan.m.b@ufl.edu or the Strategic Talent Group at Talent@hr.ufl.edu.

DR. MELISSA JOHNSON | MARCH 24TH 2023

Interim Director, University Honors Program
University of Florida
Presentation and Q&A Session: Friday, March 24th, 2023, 3:00pm
Leigh Hall Room 0207
https://ufl.zoom.us/j/98517689222
Passcode: 633574
Those who attend the presentation or meet with the candidate,
please complete the Feedback Survey for Melissa Johnson by 5pm Wednesday March 29^th.
CV

DR. MICHAEL BLANDINO| APRIL 3RD, 2023

Assistant Dean, Ogden Honors College
Louisiana State University
Presentation and Q&A Session: Monday, April 3rd, 2023, 3:30pm
McCarty Hall D, Room G001
https://ufl.zoom.us/j/95466561311
Passcode: 810192
Those who attend the presentation or meet with the candidate,
please complete the Feedback Survey for Michael Blandino by 5pm Thursday April 6^th.
CV

DR. KATHY COOKE | APRIL 10TH, 2023

Professor of History & Former Founding Dean, Honors College
University of South Alabama
Presentation and Q&A Session: Monday, April 10th 3:30pm
McCarty Hall D, Room G001
https://ufl.zoom.us/j/97466820159
Passcode: 122300
Those who attend the presentation or meet with the candidate,
please complete the Feedback Survey for Kathy Cooke by 5pm Thursday April 6^th.
CV