Connection Coach

About the role

The Connection Coach plays a key role in successfully onboarding new students from the point of application and promoting a positive learning experience through their first year, in an effort to meet student retention, success and completion goals of the college. The Connection Coach provides registration assistance, support, advisement and connections to college resources, aimed at motivating and engaging new students in order for them to be successful.

Responsibilities

• Register and onboard cohort of students and coach them through the process of being a first-time student
• Provide advising to students, including non-advisees, through walk-in times in office and at targeted special events such as New Student Orientation, Accepted Student Days and Welcome Week Activities
• Assist students with identifying, planning for, and overcoming potential obstacles in the placement testing, registration, financial aid, and technology processes and procedures
• Assist students with setting goals and defining steps in education and career planning for the first year
• Maintain advising log or case management files to track contact hours, issues and outcomes with appropriate documentation
• Monitor student progress toward goals and assist students and instructors to problem solve issues that arise related to progress towards academic goals, persistence, attendance, and completion
• Explain the processes for interpreting transfer credits, prior learning assessment, satisfactory academic progress (SAP) and other credit and financial issues for students
• Review and stay current on curriculum requirements and policies impacting students, including meta majors and guided pathways
• Provide targeted outreach and hold meetings (including remote/online) with students flagged from the Early Alert program, with a focus on identified at-risk populations and LatinX populations
• Create and conduct workshops and information sessions and develop / distribute materials as needed to support student success
• Develop printed and on-line resources such as first-year guidelines and financial literacy information to help students and their families better understand
• Participate in New Student Orientations
• Provide and/or procure bilingual service to monolingual and limited English-speaking program participants and/or their family members as needed to achieve the grant objectives
• Provide advising/coaching in both English and Spanish language when needed for an advisee and their family
• Work both collectively as a team and also independently with the ability to make well informed decisions in the best interest of each advisee
• Identify support that students need with a focus on goal setting, GPA recovery, study skills, test anxiety and stress management skills, time management, and connecting students to helpful resources
• Conduct workshops and hands-on training how to navigate through institutional technology and campus resources; assess workshops and training sessions
• Meet enrollment and retention goals
• Provide monthly report on activities and initiatives
• Monitor student progress proactively, and conduct outreach to connect students to services
• Coordinate student referrals to departments or services to help them overcome social and economic barriers
• For online learners, counsel and advise students by phone, email, text and other available online technologies
• Attend staff meetings and trainings as required
• Meet regularly with the Director of Advising and Retention and Task Force to inform challenges, or needed support
• Perform other related duties as required

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree required
• 2–3 years’ experience in instruction and/or student service and/or related field; preference may be given to those with experience as an academic advisor/counselor/recruiter or faculty member in a higher education setting
• Knowledge of and commitment to serving bilingual/bicultural student populations and others traditionally underrepresented in higher education
• General conversational English/Spanish speaking and listening as measured by scoring a performance level of 7 or higher on a standardized live telephone assessment

Preferred:

• Bachelor’s degree in education, counseling, psychology or related field; preference may be given to individuals who possess a Master’s degree
• Community college experience
• Experience working at a Hispanic Serving Institution (college or university serving 25% or more Hispanic students)

Skills

• Excellent communication and public speaking skills
• Excellent interpersonal skills and ability to work well with people
• Excellent written communication skills especially in the areas of report writing and business correspondence
• Ability to write reports, business correspondence, and procedure manuals
• Ability to effectively present information and respond to questions from groups of managers, clients, customers, and the general public
• Ability to solve practical problems and deal with a variety of concrete variables in situations
• Ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide in all units of measure, using whole numbers, common fractions, and decimals; ability to compute rate, ratio, and percent and to draw and interpret bar graphs
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office (especially Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) and Internet skills; knowledge of Ellucian Colleague or other administrative software a plus

Working Hours

Working hours consist of a 7.5-hour period exclusive of a ½- or 1-hour lunch. Specific hours will be assigned at the onset of employment. The employee will be required to work one evening per week, to be agreed upon at the onset of employment. The employee may be required to work additional evening or weekend hours; these additional hours are optional and may be taken in addition to or in lieu of regular hours. This is an on-campus position that will work with students both in person and remotely.

Travel Requirements

Position requires occasional local travel; employee must have access to transportation.

Physical Demands

Regularly talk or hear; frequently stand, sit, and reach with hands and arms; occasionally walk, stoop, kneel, crouch, or crawl. Must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds.

Work Environment

The noise level in the work environment is usually moderate.