Mar 02, 2020
About Us:
The Aspen Institute is a global nonprofit organization committed to realizing a free, just, and equitable society. Founded in 1949, the Institute drives change through dialogue, leadership, and action to help solve the most important challenges facing the United States and the world. Headquartered in Washington, DC, the Institute has a campus in Aspen, Colorado, and an international network of partners.
The Aspen Institute Education & Society Program (Aspen Education) improves public education by inspiring, informing, and influencing education leaders across policy and practice, with an emphasis on achieving equity for students of color and students from low-income families. Aspen Education supports leaders at all levels, from networks of urban superintendents and their teams, to state chiefs and their cabinets, to elected officials and their staffers.
Aspen Education is focused on:
1) Advancing a richer vision of student success that integrates the social, emotional, and academic dimensions of learning as essential to advancing equity;
2) Transforming education systems so that they can sponsor and model exemplary learning and continuous improvement practices;
3) Developing education leaders to achieve transformation in learning, equity, and efficacy;
4) Understanding and addressing poverty in America by fostering connections across education and: housing, health and nutrition, transportation, and criminal justice policy and addressing the impact of race and racism on opportunity in America.
And does this work by:
1) Hosting thought-provoking convenings of diverse leaders from the district, state, national and federal levels that create powerful learning experiences that support and make explicit connections across policy and practice;
2) Developing resources and tools for national, state, and local policymakers, practitioners, and philanthropy leaders to disseminate lessons and promising practices in a nonpartisan, non-ideological way;
3) Cultivating and fostering partnerships to inform and challenge our thinking, surface and spread promising practices and recommendations, and share and apply our resources and tools.
Associate, Education Practice
The Aspen Institute Education & Society Program is seeking a committed and organized Associate to add critical capacity to the Practice Team. The Aspen Institute Education & Society Program improves public education by creating venues for authentic learning and honest dialogue, and producing a range of resources and tools, for education leaders to shift mindsets, and take action.
About the Role:
The Associate, Practice works closely with the Assistant Director, Practice, and the broader Program team on the design, planning, and execution of exemplary learning experiences for education leaders, seek and review relevant research, and provide project management for Aspen Education networks, convenings and aligned activities. They will also correspond directly with a diverse set of education leaders..
Essential responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
Supporting the health of practice networks and convenings
Content Development for Convenings
Track and synthesize research, education trends, and takeaways from Aspen Education convenings and other outreach to create quality, aligned materials for convenings, including agendas, overviews, facilitation protocols and writing prompts that support exemplary adult learning and reflect our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion
Development of high-quality briefing books to support excellent engagement from participants
Project Management
Manage project planning process for multiple convenings throughout the year
Manage and execute on project deadlines, external relationships, and partner relationships
Lead knowledge capture processes for district and other Practice and Leadership meetings, including but not limited to:
Synthesizing trends and themes to create after-action reports and memos
Analyze trends from evaluations and interviews to support continuous improvement
Ensure strong follow up for convening participants
Supporting internal expertise
Identifying relevant content to keep program staff abreast of significant issues in the field and to advance our shared knowledge and growth related to race, equity and inclusion.
Excellent maintenance and management of materials to ensure ease of access for the broader Program team
Support reliable communication between Practice, Policy, and other teams
Supporting external functions
Support fundraising activities on an as-needed basis
Create strong first-drafts of content, including but not limited to blog posts, reports, conference presentations, and issue briefs
Correspond frequently with current and potential l partners and participants
About You:
Bachelor’s degree required, higher education preferred
3-5 years working in the education sector, experience in K-12 schools or district preferred
Commitment to increasing high-quality instruction and student experience in public education, especially for students from low-income families and students of color
Subject matter expertise in instructional pedagogy, social and emotional development, and/or adult learning
Understanding of K-12 systems change and potential barriers to change at the macro level
Solid understanding, interest, and comfort with education policy; enthusiastic about finding intersections and opportunities to integrate and intersect policy and practice discussions
Committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion across all functions, engagements, and relationships
Excellent project management skills, including but not limited to organization and facilitation of meetings, managing multiple timelines and leading teams to the successful completion of multi-layered projects
Research and analysis skills
Excellent written and oral communication skills, including but not limited to distilling salient points into summaries and drafting professional correspondence
Ability and willingness to travel up to 20% of the time. Occasional night and weekend work required, usually as part of planning or execution of site visits
About the Work:
Aspen Education has developed multiple strategic networks to encourage and facilitate high-impact relationships among practitioners. Those networks include the Urban Superintendents Network, the Chiefs Network, and other workshops built around key questions in schools and school systems.
The Urban Superintendent network brings together a group of Superintendents from prioritized districts and states to facilitate high-quality professional learning and professional collaboration. The Chiefs Networks focuses on Chief Academic Officers and Chief Schools Officers. In addition, the Practice & Leadership team manages ad hoc projects that investigate and inform solutions to complex problems with broad implications for the field. Excellent collaboration, alignment, and continued conversation between the networks, projects, advisors, and partner organizations is key to achieving our desired impact.
In addition, the Education and Society Program team, with the Associate’s contribution, will work to define a strategy that strengthens and advances the overall strategic objectives, focused on creating impact, coherence, and connection across activities as well as recognizes opportunities to connect with the Policy team.
Aspen Education is committed to ensuring the diversity of our team. While not a minimum or mandatory qualification, we strongly encourage candidates of color, those who identify as Native American, women, people of low-income backgrounds, those who are differently-abled, and those with first-hand experience of education inequity to apply for this role.
The Aspen Institute is an Equal Opportunity Employer and complies with all District and federal laws. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or protected veteran or disabled status and will not be discriminated against.
Candidate must have the ability to work under pressure and handle stress. Candidate must also have the ability to meet the regular attendance policy of the Aspen Institute.
The Aspen Institute
Washington, DC, USA
Full-time
