Director of Community Standards

About the role

The Director of Community Standards is responsible for designing and implementing a robust, educationally grounded system to prevent and address student misconduct at Tufts University. This includes overseeing the investigation and resolution of cases involving alleged violations of community standards, including behavioral and academic misconduct, with a focus on emerging issues like the misuse of generative artificial intelligence (AI).

Responsibilities

• Triage all incoming incident reports and complaints submitted to the Office of Community Standards, assigning them to appropriate staff.
• Coordinate a holistic, school-wide response to incidents, consulting with academic, residential, and wellbeing partners.
• Track turnaround time, learning outcomes, student feedback on process, equity in outcomes across student populations, and other relevant metrics.
• Follow up as needed to ensure prompt, fair, and educational resolutions of all cases, using data to continually improve the system.
• Regularly update standards for managing cases, including procedures, timelines, decision-making criteria, and the application of restorative approaches.
• Train staff in the Office of Community Standards, Residential Life & Learning, and other partner areas in these standards, including the application of restorative practices such as restorative conferences, circles, and shuttle dialogue.
• Oversee cases to ensure established standards are met, serving as an escalation point for challenging cases and providing ongoing coaching and instruction to staff members handling cases.
• Personally resolve very complex and highly sensitive conduct cases, including matters involving threats to community safety, alleged academic misconduct with significant institutional implications, and cases involving the unauthorized or improper use of generative AI and related technologies.
• Interview, maintain ongoing communication with, and provide appropriate educational intervention and resource referrals to complainants, respondents, witnesses, and others involved in the student conduct process.
• Conduct investigations, facilitate developmental and restorative meetings, create and assign educational sanctions and learning-based outcomes, and assess student learning.
• Interact with families, attorneys, faculty, and others on behalf of the University as needed.
• In partnership with faculty, CELT, and other university partners, serve as a primary resource for academic integrity matters involving generative AI, ensuring that resolutions emphasize student learning about ethical use of emerging technologies in scholarship and research.
• Compose formal letters to students regarding complex and serious issues, and routinely compose detailed documentation on meetings with students, investigation progress, restorative agreements, and other case-related information.
• Maintain the highest standard of integrity and consistently act with good judgment, ethical sensibility, procedural and substantive fairness, equitable treatment of all, a nuanced understanding of and respect for the rights of students, and a recognition of the University's educational philosophy of student conduct.
• Provide functional supervision to staff in other departments handling cases on behalf of Community Standards.
• Serve as the primary Student Life content expert on federal and state laws and regulations related to student conduct administration, including the Clery Act, FERPA, Title IX, Title VI, the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act, the Higher Education Opportunity Act, the Stop Campus Hazing Act, and others.
• Regularly review and revise university policies related to student behavior, including the Student Code of Conduct and academic integrity policies, with particular attention to evolving expectations regarding generative AI, online conduct, and digital communication.
• Consult with, train, and present to high-level university partners, including faculty committees, individual faculty members, leaders in other university departments, and student life leaders, on community standards, academic integrity (including AI-related issues), and restorative approaches to conflict.
• Provide authoritative advice and expert guidance during relevant crises.

Requirements

• Master's Degree in higher education, college student development, conflict resolution, restorative practices, counseling, psychology, law, or another closely related discipline, or the international equivalent.
• At least 6 years of progressively responsible experience adjudicating student conduct cases in a higher education setting, including at least three years working full time in student conduct.
• Current and extensive knowledge of laws, trends, and practices related to student conduct in the college and university environment - including the evolving landscape of academic integrity in the era of generative AI - and demonstrated experience applying them to the student conduct setting.
• Demonstrated experience integrating restorative practices, restorative justice, transformative justice, or other forms of alternative dispute resolution into a student conduct or community accountability framework.
• Outstanding written and oral communication skills, including experience with legal and decision-letter writing.
• Excellent critical thinking and problem-solving skills, with the ability to make sound, well-documented decisions under ambiguity.
• Highly advanced helping skills (e.g., active and reflective listening, facilitated reflection, appropriate confrontation, recognition of mental health concerns requiring referral, suicide prevention and intervention, etc.), and experience providing case management to students in distress.
• Experience successfully employing conflict management skills (e.g., de-escalation, assertive communication, conflict coaching, giving feedback, mediation, facilitated dialogue).

Qualifications

• Knowledge and experience typically acquired by: Master's Degree in higher education, college student development, conflict resolution, restorative practices, counseling, psychology, law, or another closely related discipline, or the international equivalent.
• At least 6 years of progressively responsible experience adjudicating student conduct cases in a higher education setting, including at least three years working full time in student conduct.
• Current and extensive knowledge of laws, trends, and practices related to student conduct in the college and university environment - including the evolving landscape of academic integrity in the era of generative AI - and demonstrated experience applying them to the student conduct setting.
• Demonstrated experience integrating restorative practices, restorative justice, transformative justice, or other forms of alternative dispute resolution into a student conduct or community accountability framework.
• Outstanding written and oral communication skills, including experience with legal and decision-letter writing.
• Excellent critical thinking and problem-solving skills, with the ability to make sound, well-documented decisions under ambiguity.
• Highly advanced helping skills (e.g., active and reflective listening, facilitated reflection, appropriate confrontation, recognition of mental health concerns requiring referral, suicide prevention and intervention, etc.), and experience providing case management to students in distress.
• Experience successfully employing conflict management skills (e.g., de-escalation, assertive communication, conflict coaching, giving feedback, mediation, facilitated dialogue).

Skills

• Knowledge of laws, trends, and practices related to student conduct in the college and university environment - including the evolving landscape of academic integrity in the era of generative AI.
• Experience integrating restorative practices, restorative justice, transformative justice, or other forms of alternative dispute resolution into a student conduct or community accountability framework.
• Outstanding written and oral communication skills, including experience with legal and decision-letter writing.
• Excellent critical thinking and problem-solving skills, with the ability to make sound, well-documented decisions under ambiguity.
• Highly advanced helping skills (e.g., active and reflective listening, facilitated reflection, appropriate confrontation, recognition of mental health concerns requiring referral, suicide prevention and intervention, etc.), and experience providing case management to students in distress.
• Experience successfully employing conflict management skills (e.g., de-escalation, assertive communication, conflict coaching, giving feedback, mediation, facilitated dialogue).

Benefits

Not specified.

Pay

Not specified.

Schedule

Not specified.