Overview

Tufts is a student-centered research university that educates approximately 13,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 3,400 staff and 1600 faculty across its campuses in Massachusetts, Portland, Maine, Phoenix, Arizona, and Talloires, France.  These campuses are home to eight schools—Arts and Sciences, Dental Medicine, Engineering, Biomedical Sciences, Law and Diplomacy, Medicine, Nutrition Science and Policy, and Veterinary Medicine—and two colleges - the College of Civic Life, and the University College.

The Office of the Provost is responsible for setting and guiding institutional and budgetary priorities that advance the University’s academic mission. Together with deans and senior administrators, the Provost and Vice Provosts direct and support the partnerships, collaborations, and planning initiatives on all of Tufts’ campuses. This team champions and integrates educational and research activities across the university and ensures programs are of the highest quality by working closely with faculty, staff, alumni, and students. The Office of the Provost oversees the university’s education, research, faculty, innovation, and institutional inclusive excellence functions.

What You'll Do

Tufts seeks an institutional leader who will advance the transformative use of data throughout the University.  Reporting to the Vice Provost for Education, the Associate Vice Provost for Data Analytics and Decision Support (AVP DA-DS) will be recognized as a senior leader charged with building a culture of data-informed decision making within Tufts through championing and collaborating with campus stakeholders.

General Responsibilities:

• Supports the effective use of data at Tufts University by building a data-informed decision culture within Tufts through championing and collaborating with campus stakeholders in broadening data sharing, data governance, actionable insight development, and professional skill development.
• Works closely with Office of the Provost leaders to further Tufts' priorities through business analytics, data-focused decision-support activities, academic planning, accreditation, assessment, and program reviews.
• Provides data and analytics strategy leadership for the university and contributes to the leadership around the governance and policy infrastructure necessary to facilitate the use of data for strategic advantage, operational benefit, and decision support at the university-level.
• Supports a high-performing Institutional Research team that supports strategic, academic, and budgetary planning and decision-making through analytics, including the presentation and distribution of relevant and timely information, policy analyses, peer comparisons, and projections of future trends.
• Accountable for the design and implementation of strategies that enable Institutional Research to acquire, analyze, share, report on, and govern applicable university data.
• Works closely with technical professionals in Tufts Technology Services (TTS) responsible for data warehousing and virtualization (Denodo), systems integration, and reporting, to build and sustain an enterprise data strategy.
• Is a key player in establishing and sustaining a university-wide data governance infrastructure that fosters a culture of trust and shared responsibility for the ethical use of data for strategic purposes.

• Fosters the creation of data-informed insights that support strategic and tactical opportunities.
• Champions a data-informed decision-making culture and data literacy.
• Promotes an environment where data is a shared asset.
• Uses data to maximize learning and operational outcomes.
• Serve as (or oversee) Tufts’ representative with national data groups, e.g., the American Association of Universities Data Exchange (AAUDE) & the Association for Institutional Research (AIR).

Data and Analytics Strategy:

• Provides direction and oversight for enterprise-wide data, reporting, and analytics via a clear strategy, governance, and policy development.
• Supports university strategic decision making.
• Provides university-wide leadership in data analytics
• Increases the value of university data assets by aligning data collected for operational purposes with data needed for strategic purposes to provide the organization with information required to achieve strategic goals.
• Establishes and oversees a data literacy program.

Data Governance:

• Establishes and sustains a data governance system that aligns data trusteeship with the overall data strategy and fosters a culture of trust and shared responsibility for the ethical use of data.

• Participate in (potentially, lead) the oversight of governance policy creation and compliance.
• Identify and standardize the governance of data and analytics university-wide.

• Collaborate with the chief information security officer and privacy officer to create policies for the appropriate protection of information assets. This protection should encompass a defined information life cycle, from acquisition or creation to end of life destruction and disposal procedures.
• Establish Master Data Management and common terms and definitions for data that facilitate cross-institutional data use.
• Develop standards for the appropriate use of information taking into consideration changing regulations, security requirements, privacy needs, ethical values, societal expectations and cultural norms, in cooperation with the Chief Information Security Officer, General Counsel, Privacy Specialist, and other concerned parties.
• Build and oversee a data governance team.

Analytics:

• Oversee a federated system of analytics with experts in Institutional Research who use advanced data analysis approached and techniques to create strategic insight and business decision support.
• Develop the enterprise’s capacity to develop insights with advanced analytics such as data science, natural language processing, AI/ML, network science etc.
• Assist in the development of KPIs for measuring the university’s strategic success.
• Create an Ethics Advisory board to eliminate bias in models and maintain data privacy.

Management and Communication:

• Ensure excellent customer relationship management. Maintain effective working relationships with collaborators, colleagues, and customers.
• Determine KPIs for the data and analytics organization and take responsibility for achieving them.
• Communicate and coordinate with other data-centric organizations to keep them up to date and involved in data and analytics planning.
• Cultivate trust and transparency through communication, including a website, newsletter, and user community meetings.
• Consult on new data-related projects to provide advice on best practices and integrate the new data into governance processes.

What We're Looking For

Basic Requirements:

• Knowledge and skills as typically acquired through a Master's (or other terminal) degree in higher education, social sciences, measurement and evaluation, business, or another field requiring experience with and knowledge of direct and indirect assessment and evaluation methods.
•  At least five (5) years of professional experience in institutional research leadership and conducting outcomes assessment and/or applied social science research (quantitative, qualitative, mixed- and multi-method) preferably in a higher education setting and including three (3) years of team supervision.
• Experience with institutional accreditation.
• Excellent statistical and analytical skills with an ability to explain complex data analysis to a diverse range of constituents.
• Excellent judgment, discretion, accuracy, and attention to detail.
• Strong interpersonal skills and demonstrated ability to effectively communicate with all stakeholders including senior leadership.
• Experience in meeting the needs of academic leadership in data analysis and interpretation.
•  Experience in contributing to strategic planning, enrollment management, and/or resource allocation.
•  Ability to work independently, define and answer research problems, interact and collaborate across academic units.
•  Demonstrated excellence in project planning, problem-solving, collaboration, service delivery, and building relationships with diverse colleagues.
• Demonstrated experience with predictive analytics, Tableau, SQL, PowerBI and data visualization tools.
• Demonstrated experience with equitable and ethical data analytics and research design, including issues of privacy, confidentiality and diversity in a post-secondary education environment. 

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Doctoral (or other terminal) degree in higher education, social sciences, measurement and evaluation, business, or another field requiring experience with and knowledge of direct and indirect assessment and evaluation methods.
•  Demonstrated experience leading institutional decision making around data strategy for both external reporting and internal iterative excellence.
•  Experience in contributing to strategic planning, enrollment management, and/or resource allocation.
•  Demonstrated experience in the utilization of ML in informing data driven decision making.
•  A learner-centered mindset in driving decisions and outcomes.

Pay Range

Minimum $164,900.00, Midpoint $206,150.00, Maximum $247,400.00
 

Salary is based on related experience, expertise, and internal equity; generally, new hires can expect pay between the minimum and midpoint of the range.