Senior Administration Assistant; Academic Quality

Role: Senior Administration Assistant (Academic Quality)

Grade and Salary: Grade 5, £26,707 - £31,236 per annum

FTE and Working Pattern: 1

FTE, 35hrs per week, Monday – Friday

Holiday Entitlement: 28 days annual leave plus 9 buildings closed days (and Christmas Eve when it falls on a weekday)

The School of Social Sciences is looking to appoint a full‑time Senior Administration Assistant. The role holder will be responsible for providing high quality day‑to‑day administrative and secretarial support to the School’s Associate Executive Dean (Academic Quality), the Deputy Associate Executive Dean (Academic Quality) in Edinburgh and the Deputy Associate Executive Dean (Academic Quality) based in Dubai. The role works within a wider support team within the School.

The successful applicant will have a proven track record in the delivery of administrative services to senior staff and will be relied upon to provide an excellent administrative service to a range of stakeholders.

The ability to initiate and complete tasks to the highest standard is essential. Excellent organisational, interpersonal and communication skills are also vital to this role, as are strong IT skills (particularly with Microsoft Office Packages). Applicants should also have experience of working in a customer‑oriented role. The role will suit a self‑motivated individual who is able to work flexibly as a member of a team within a challenging and dynamic environment.

The work will be varied and the post holder will be expected to be able to deliver a fair, friendly and timely service to all our students and staff. All the support services within the University are committed to delivering a customer focused service to students, staff and visitors. To achieve this commitment all support staff need to be adaptable, flexible and prepared to support other teams and individuals.

• Provide high quality administrative and secretarial support to the Associate Executive Dean (Academic Quality). This will include day‑to‑day operational aspects of work such as diary management, email prioritisation and management, managing travel, organisation of meetings and minor internal procurement paperwork.
• Organise and provide support to Boards of Examiners and Boards of Studies and any other Academic Quality forums as and when required (scheduling meetings, preparation of agendas, circulation of documentation, minuting meetings and following‑up actions).
• Become expert in the use of the Global Curriculum Management system to support changes to the curriculum and to ensure that new courses/programmes are submitted for approval correctly.
• Interpret and advise academic colleagues on Heriot‑Watt Ordinances and Regulations as well as their operationalisation through detailed and complex academic quality policies and procedures. This will include providing support and guidance in how to use and understand the Global Curriculum Management system to ensure compliance with Heriot‑Watt policy and external accrediting bodies.
• Take responsibility for actioning decisions taken in School level Academic Quality forums and meetings to ensure that progress is made in a range of areas.
• Support academic staff to understand and apply the academic quality policies and procedures to ensure that they are sufficiently knowledgeable in respect to their academic role in maintaining high academic quality standards.
• Liaise with academic colleagues and appropriate professional service colleagues to ensure timely completion of academic quality reports or analyses (e.g., annual monitoring reports, reviews for School Studies Committee).
• Plan and organise training events for academic staff liaising with professional services colleagues as appropriate (e.g., exam board training, training about implementation of new processes).
• Manage Academic Quality projects at School level to ensure that all deadlines are met and that the outputs are optimised and deliver against the objectives set for academic quality projects.
• Maintain academic quality resources held on the SoSS Workspace including keeping the information current based on changes to University AQ policy…