Senior Educational Program Designer

Senior Educational Program Designer

Western Governors University (WGU) is committed to expanding access to higher education through online, competency‑based degree programs. We seek a thought leader to shape our program design across the enterprise, ensuring that learning pathways are engaging, equitable, and aligned with industry expectations.

Compensation: Grade:
Faculty 507 – Pay Range: $78,300 – $117,500

4001 South 700 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84107. Hybrid work: four days in the office, one day remote.

• Break down complex problems and explore ways to delight users with tools that solve their problems efficiently and effectively.
• Collaborate and partner with cross‑functional teams of program development, academic, operations, and other stakeholders.
• Design programs that deliver on the promise of competency‑based education to provide efficiency, flexibility, personalization, achievement of goals, and fit with industry expectations.
• Design programs that promote social mobility and equity.
• Ensure that program designs maximize broad access, including for underserved students, industry relevance, learning, and financial sustainability.
• Apply best practices in backwards program design to the context of CBE programs.
• Quickly discover and prototype potential options, then weigh trade‑offs between choices.
• Anticipate, advise upon, and document the cost, scope, and implementation effort of competing program design options.
• Apply a systems‑thinking approach to help collaborators consider all elements of program design, such as enrollment, learner engagement, curriculum, instruction, evaluation, assessment, etc.
• Collaborate on the identification of student personas and ensure that pathways efficiently meet their needs.
• Conduct industry and outside standards research and align program designs to industry and outside standard needs.
• Select outcomes and design programs in meaningful ways.
• Assess the sustainability of a program design at scale over its lifecycle.
• Recommend tools and technologies that achieve scale while maintaining quality programming.
• Set success metrics.
• Thoroughly and beautifully document the resulting program design to guide development decisions that uphold the integrity of the design as well as provide a historical record for decisions that were made.
• Establish a model for training/education for faculty, mentors, enrollment counselors, and all other stakeholders; work directly with students during the deployment of programs and courses.
• Ensure the overall quality and effectiveness of training/education for faculty, mentors, and enrollment counselors.
• Communicate solutions to stakeholders in a manner that simplifies complexity and generates excitement.
• Facilitate meetings and brainstorming sessions that are organized and productive.
• Advocate for high standards of excellence in providing delightful and rewarding user experiences, and proactively support the team in achieving them.
• Provide thought leadership for new and emerging techniques for competency‑based education.
• Perform other related duties as assigned.

• Experience designing products or solutions that benefit end users and society.
• Extensive experience leading design thinking and product design sprints in person and with remote teams.
• Proven track record devising and designing high‑quality web and/or mobile products in collaboration with product management and engineering partners.
• Good listener – weighs input from multiple perspectives when forming opinions and recommendations.
• Collaborative and team‑oriented work approach.
• Excellent written, oral, presentation, and interpersonal skills.
• Proficiency in technology‑driven document and collaboration tools, including Microsoft Office suite, web conferencing, and cloud‑based tools.

• Communicates to improve and promote teamwork, decision making, and problem solving.
• Listens and responds effectively to the reactions and positions of others and encourages the expression of diverse ideas and opinions.
• Adjusts message and style to fit the audience.
• Provides timely and…