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.

As the Vice President and Dean of the Department of {Cyber Security, Software, Cloud & IT Management} at WGU’s College of Information Technology (COIT), you will play a key leadership role in driving the education and successful outcomes of students in your field. You will have comprehensive responsibility for growing the department by developing new, innovative, and market-relevant competency-based program offerings. In collaboration with other WGU organizations, you will lead industry partnerships and design go-to-market strategies to attract and enroll the right students into these programs.

Your role will also focus on ensuring successful educational and employment outcomes for students by leveraging and optimizing faculty support and employer partnerships. Your success will be measured by the ability to build, deliver, and scale programs profitably while maintaining a high level of retention and return on investment for students, particularly those from underserved populations.

This position reports to the Senior Vice President of COIT and emphasizes building strong, scalable programs that contribute to the university’s mission of delivering high-quality education with tangible career benefits.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

• Direct P&L ownership experience with managing over $50M+ P&L
• Drive a culture of continuous experimentation, measurement, and learning from data to rapidly improve the quality and delivery to students
• Strong people leader to directly or indirectly lead a diverse team of 50+ people including academic program leaders, instructional faculty, and student coaches/mentors
• Influences Others and Communicates Effectively: 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 helpful feedback. Communicates appropriately to win support with all audiences.
• Collaborates: Works cooperatively with others across the organization to achieve shared objectives. Represents own interests while being fair to others and their areas. Partners with others to get work done. Credits others for their contributions and accomplishments. Gains buy-in, trust and support of others.
• Manages Ambiguity: Deals comfortably with the uncertainty of change. Effectively handles risk. Can decide to act without the total picture. Is calm and productive, even when things are up in the air. Deals constructively with problems that do not have clear solutions or outcomes.
• Drives for Results: Has a strong outcomes-based orientation. Persists in accomplishing objectives despite obstacles and setbacks. Has a track record of successfully achieving goals. Pushes self and helps others achieve results. Has a continuous improvement mindset.
• Builds Effective Teams:   Forms teams with appropriate and diverse mixes of styles, perspectives, and experience. Establishes common objectives and a shared mindset. Creates a feeling of belonging and strong team morale. Shares wins and rewards team efforts. Fosters open dialogue and collaboration among the team. Creates a team that works well cross-functionally.
• Organizational Learning: Learns quickly when facing new situations. Experiments to find new solutions. Takes on challenges of unfamiliar tasks. Extracts lessons-learned from failures and mistakes. Expands knowledge base through ongoing curiosity.
• Performs other related duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skill and Abilities:

• Customer or student obsession with a focus on driving successful outcomes for them
• Industry or academic leader in the discipline {Cyber Security, Data Science, Software, Cloud & IT Management}
• Understanding of the industry trends, job opportunities, and educational market trends in the discipline
• Credible voice of the department in external partnerships and presentation opportunities
• Strong leadership-by-influence skills to drive cross-functional and cross-organizational teams to deliver on goals
• Execution focus with the ability to dive-deep and live in the details with a fast-paced weekly execution cadence
• Ability to organize and coordinate activities and results across cross-functional teams
• Ability to coach and develop direct reports
• Ability to collaborate with and manage teams, including those in a remote environment, while demonstrating excellence, integrity, and respect
• Ability to work effectively in a highly matrixed organization
• Ability to build relationships and influence at all levels, both internally and externally
• Ability to be an agent of change in a rapidly changing environment
• Proven ability to analyze data to identify trends and drive innovation
• Sound judgement and decision-making skills
• Strong oral and written communication skills

Competencies: 

Organizational Impact: 

• Head of an Office or Function with significant impact on the Unit or University.
• Accountable for the overall performance and success of assigned area. Establishes and implements tactical and operational plans for the department, with broad impact on other areas. Oversees development of programs to support the University’s mission, vision, and goals, as well as develops policies and programs for the improvement of operations across the University.
• Assumes responsibility for financial management of the department.

Problem Solving & Decision Making: 

• Responsible for improving entire processes, programs, or systems.
• Problems faced are frequently complex and multi-dimensional, requiring broad-based consideration of variables that affect areas outside of immediate responsibility. Extensively analyzes problems to seek understanding of the underlying issues.

Communication & Influence: 

• Communicates within and outside of the department, and typically has responsibilities for communicating with external contacts.
• Interacts internally with executive level management to influence and negotiate on sensitive matters, policy, and practices. 
• Leadership & Talent Management 
• Manages multiple teams led by directors.
• Has hiring, firing, promotion, performance development, and reward authority for direct reports.

Job Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:

• Master’s with 10+ years of relevant experience
• 5 years of senior leadership experience with hands-on experience in hiring, managing, and scaling significant teams
• Ability to travel is required.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with startups, SaaS companies, or other similar fast-paced and rapidly changing organizations
• Executive presence and judgement with demonstrated experience presenting to executive management or boards of large organizations
• Experience working in education, to include higher ed, non-traditional credentials, and distinct online delivery platforms.
• Terminal degree in a related field of study.

Physical Requirements:

• Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer.
• Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at times.

Salary Range: $180000-300000

How to apply: apply online

Full-time Regular Positions (FT classification, standard working hours = 40)

This is a full-time, regular position that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

The University is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status.