Title: Assistant Director of Student Writing
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Position Purpose:
The Assistant Director (AD) of Student Writing is the operational lead of the Student Writing & Language Center. The AD carries out the center’s mission and vision on a day-to-day basis, ensuring that policies and procedures are followed, updated as needed, and consistently communicated to all tutor staff. The AD is responsible for the daily and seasonal running of the center, the hiring, training, and supervision of entry-level peer tutors, and the development of student-facing programming and campus partnerships.
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Job Duties:
Tutor Hiring, Training & Supervision:
- Supports and supervises writing tutors involved in First Year Seminars.
- Participates in annual hiring cycles for new writing tutors and language tutors, including marketing, outreach for nominations and recommendations, application review, interviews, selection, and onboarding.
- Teaches and runs the Basic Tutor Education program which helps prepare new writing tutors for entry-level work with first-year students.
- Conducts regular walk-throughs, office hours, and observations in the center, providing timely and supportive feedback to the tutors.
- Maintains ongoing mentorship with all tutors and provides direct tutoring support to students as needed.
- Works with Lead Tutors as a support layer for staff meetings, hiring, shift coverage, and data reporting.
Center Operations and Management:
- Oversees daily center operations including shift scheduling, space management, supply inventory, and tutor accountability.
- Manages the Penji platform and Qualtrics surveying for tutor tracking, session data, and client satisfaction reporting.
- Holds primary responsibility for all center record-keeping and coverage, including tracking and approving all tutor timesheets on a bi-weekly basis.
- Manages the center's day-to-day communications and public presence–including website, social media, and marketing materials–coordinating with Student Academic Support Center staff and Resource Representatives to ensure consistent student support across the Peer Learning Commons.
- Plans and facilitates biweekly tutor staff meetings.
- Writes and produces the weekly Friday Digest (internal e-newsletter) and runs Thesis Café as a weekly community event for senior thesis writers.
- Supports tutors in preparing for and attending writing center or writing tutor conferences.
- Available to attend occasional night/weekend special event programs.
Campus Partnerships:
- Delivers student-facing workshops on topics already built and written by the Director, with the opportunity to create additional workshops if interested.
- Participates in tutor training and informational classroom workshops for the Public Speaking and Presentation Support Studio.
- Collaborates with campus partners (e.g. Purposeful Work, Student Center for Belonging and Community, and Accessible Education), to ensure all students have relevant and equitable access to writing and language support services and events.
- Supports the Director in community-engaged writing initiatives, including partnerships with local middle and high schools through the Harward Center and other local community organizations.
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Minimum Qualifications:
Education
- Bachelor's degree required.
- MA in Rhetoric & Composition, English, Linguistics, Language and/or Communication, or a closely related field, preferred.
- Experience working with multilingual students, and/or proficient in multiple languages, highly desired.
Experience
- Writing or language teaching and/or writing or language center experience–as a tutor, administrator, or staff member–required.
- Demonstrated understanding of writing, speaking, or language center theory and practice.
- Experience supervising, training, or mentoring peer tutors, students or young adult employees.
Skills and Knowledge
- Commitment to equity and inclusion, and serving the needs of a culturally and educationally diverse community.
- Strong organizational, record-keeping, email communication, collaboration, writing and presentation skills.
- Ability to manage multiple concurrent responsibilities across a complex, high-traffic program; excellent attention to detail.
- Familiarity with learning center management platforms and online asynchronous and synchronous tutoring programs (e.g., Penji, WCOnline.)
- Comfort with data collection, tracking, and reporting (Google Sheets, Qualtrics, Google Forms, etc.), as well as social media, office, and website management tools (LinkedIn, Instagram, Slack, Wordpress, etc.)
- Genuine interest in and patience for working closely with undergraduate students, including those in their first professional role; holds high expectations while providing supportive mentorship.
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Benefits:
Bates College offers competitive salaries, excellent benefits (health, dental, sick leave, 20 days of vacation, 2 personal days, 13 paid holidays, dependent care subsidy, free parking, access to library and athletic facilities & more), and a supportive, collegial environment in a drug and smoke-free workplace.
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Equal Employment Opportunity Statement:
Bates College is committed to the principle of equal opportunity and providing an educational and work environment free from discrimination. The college prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, age, disability, genetic information or veteran status and other legally protected statuses in the recruitment and admission of its students, in the administration of its education policies and programs, or in the recruitment of its faculty and staff. Bates College adheres to all applicable state and federal equal opportunity laws and regulations. All college faculty, staff, students, contractors, visitors, and volunteers are responsible for understanding and complying with the Non-Discrimination Policy.
Inquiries concerning the college’s policies, compliance with applicable laws, statutes, and regulations (such as Title VII, Title IX, and ADA/Section 504), and complaints may be directed to Gwen Lexow, Title IX Officer, 207-786-6445 or via email at glexow@bates.edu.
About Bates:
Bates is internationally recognized as a leading liberal arts college, attracting 2,000 students from across the U.S. and around the world.
Since 1855, Bates has been dedicated to educating the whole person through creative and rigorous scholarship in a collaborative residential community. Committed to opportunity and excellence, Bates has always admitted students without regard to gender, race, religion, or national origin.
Cultivating intellectual discovery and informed civic action, Bates prepares leaders sustained by a love of learning and zeal for responsible stewardship of the wider world. Bates engages the forces — intellectual trends, demographic changes, and technology — that are transforming higher education and the world into which our students graduate.
Bates has highly competitive admissions, graduates over 90 percent of its entering students, and more than half of its alumni earn graduate degrees. Bates employs 200 faculty members and 550 staff.
The college is proud of deep roots in the Lewiston/Auburn community, Maine’s second-largest urban area with a population of approximately 65,000. Bates is located on a beautiful, 133-acre, traditional New England campus in Lewiston, an emerging city with an entrepreneurial climate, a lively arts scene, and a dynamic business community. Bates is 35 miles north of Portland, 140 miles north of Boston, and 350 miles north of New York City.