Senior Manager, Academic Program Production & Improvement

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career. Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals.

The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Grade:  609

Pay Range: $ - $

Job Description

Responsible for leading the design, development, and continuous improvement of the various academic programs offered to students. Leveraging both domain knowledge and leadership expertise, this role directs a cross-functional team of managers in new program development, program redevelopment, existing program maintenance/improvement, and portfolio project management. The teams consist of experts in instructional design, assessment design, learning engineering, instructional media, authoring, and AI-enabled design/development processes.

Leading their team of managers, this role aligns with department OKRs for quality, delivery, innovation, timeline, instructional outcomes, stakeholder relationships, and delivery-at-scale. Additionally, this role plans capacity and optimizes the use of internal and vendor resources.

Location: This position will be located in our Raleigh, NC office and would require you to work a hybrid schedule in the office 4 days a week with one day remote.

• Operationalizes department strategy by leading a management team to implement existing processes and change initiatives to deliver outcomes for production and student success.
• Functions as a player-coach who understands the need for first-hand contribution and close proximity to the programs at every stage of production and improvement.
• Manages the portfolio of work across their management team in terms of high-level objectives, project plans, budgets, resource allocation, vendor engagement, instructional quality, use of technology, and more.
• Leads in solving complex issues that require significant analysis, troubleshooting, and negotiation (for which exceptions or revisions to established processes and procedures may need to be made).
• Maintains an authoritative coaching relationship not only with their management team but with their managers’ production teams and contractors (~25+ resources).
• Builds upon their individual domain expertise in assessment, instructional design, educational psychology, AI, or learning project/program management to develop cross-disciplinary fluency and provide expert insight across the full range of skills essential to program production.
• Ensures that the vendors and contractors used by their management team have detailed requirements upfront and that they deliver at the level of quality agreed upon and within the established timeframe.
• Works laterally with other leaders on process engineering, innovation, quality, team culture, and other shared objectives.
• Represents and curates the best work of their managers and their teams, curating their most innovative work for purposes of advocacy, credibility, and cross-departmental education.
• Shares responsibility for fostering positive relationships with program stakeholders but provides specific consultation to anticipate and respond to…