Job Summary:
The Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) seeks a Quantitative Research Director for its newly launched Multilingual Learning Research Center (MLRC, or the Center). Established in July 2023, the MLRC is an interdisciplinary unit that advances educational outcomes for multilingual learners through innovative and socially just research and research practice partnerships (RPPs). The Quantitative Research Director will join the Qualitative Research Director and the School Network Director to co-lead the MLRC's research portfolio and develop its long-term strategy to improve the schooling experiences of multilingual learners and the teachers who support them. This is an unparalleled opportunity to help lead a groundbreaking boundary-crossing research center that will have a wide-ranging impact on a generation of scholars, educators, and students.
The MLRC leverages local, national, and global contexts to interrogate a range of issues related to the education of multilingual learners, the fastest-growing student population in the United States. Intersectional at its core, the MLRC explores the connections between multilingual and multimodal communication, language learning and content learning, qualitative and quantitative research, and scholars and practitioners. In addition to its domestic research priorities, the Center is home to the MLRC School Network, an RPP with English-speaking and bilingual international schools around the world that collaborate on research for educational improvement and equity for multilingual learners everywhere.
The Quantitative Research Director will lead and participate in the design and implementation of externally funded research, co-direct the MLRC and its strategy, and engage collaboratively with WCER, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) and its School of Education, and the broader scholarly community. This is an exceptional opportunity for a researcher interested in building and shaping a mixed-portfolio research startup enterprise, which is well-scaffolded by WCER and the UW-Madison School of Education.
The Quantitative Research Director has the ability to help shape the MLRC and build it into one of the most substantial centers focused on the education and support of multilingual learners by envisioning and developing new projects that are focused on classrooms, teachers, and teaching. The MLRC is well positioned to generate even-handed, bridge-building, high-quality research that can address pressing challenges that are seen differently around the world and across the political divide. The successful candidate will have access to a robust set of existing resources at WCER and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, including project managers who can support the core research work at the Center.
Key roles and responsibilities for this new position include:
Build and support a thriving, innovative, and cross-disciplinary research portfolio that embodies the MLRC's founding vision and mission.
- Work collaboratively with the Qualitative and School Network Directors to research the teaching and learning of multilingual learners through descriptive and hypothesis-testing studies that impact teaching practice, teacher quality, and policy in local and global contexts.
- Productively identify research problems, design innovative, boundary crossing research methodologies, perform and supervise research, and regularly prepare and present results to professional organizations and scholarly publications.
- Contribute to UW-Madison's overall research footprint, whose growth is one of the Chancellor's principal priorities.
Collaboratively develop the MLRC's vision, strategy, and structure.
- Continue to develop the MLRC in close collaboration with the Qualitative and School Network Directors and WCER's leadership. Strategize about the Center's trajectory, priorities, infrastructure, and culture, and attract research and administrative staff.
- Co-direct the day-to-day activities of the Center, including the oversight of operational responsibilities (e.g., budget and staffing).
- Engage UW-Madison's collaborative spirit and MLRC's value of collaboration to leverage the social, material, and intellectual resources provided by the nation?s best education school in the pursuit of knowledge that will improve the education of multilingual learners.
Successfully solicit grant funding and ensure the long-term financial sustainability of the MLRC.
- Creatively identify, write, and assist in developing grant opportunities, applications, and proposals that will steadily grow the size of the MLRC's grant portfolio.
- Co-lead the MLRC in becoming a financially self-sustaining entity through the strategic development of a revenue model consisting of grant funding and fee-for-service income.
- Thoughtfully monitor the MLRC's budget, revenue, and expenditures.
Elevate social justice as a core principle of the MLRC.
- Center social justice and equity in the M
Location: Madison, WI
Posted: Aug. 23, 2024, 8:01 a.m.
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