Director of Operations, Math and Statistics

About the role

The College of Arts and Sciences seeks a Director of Operations for the Math and Statistics departments to serve as a key operational and strategic partner to faculty leadership across both departments. Math and Statistics both have strong research profiles and dynamic academic programs, and the Director will play a central role in ensuring their operations effectively support and advance that work. The Director will lead the staff and oversee the systems, resources, and administrative functions that support the academic mission, ensuring operations are well organized, effective, and responsive to faculty and student experience. Working closely with faculty leadership, the Director translates academic priorities and decisions into effective operations, coordinates work across administrative functions, and ensures departments have the support necessary to deliver their programs successfully. The Director is both a doer and a leader, setting expectations, empowering and developing others, and rolling up their sleeves to do the work, solve problems, and maintain momentum.

Who You Are

You are a leader who sees the connection between the academic mission and excellent operations. You are energized by the opportunity to partner with faculty leaders, understand what they are trying to accomplish, and build the systems, processes, and resources that help turn those priorities into action. You are comfortable operating across multiple departments and locations. On any given day, you may be working with faculty leadership on an important decision, navigating a budget or staffing challenge, improving a cumbersome process, and collaborating across several offices. You have a strong bias toward doing the work. You believe leadership means empowering others and jumping in—whether that means working in a system, entering data, solving a problem, helping a colleague, or simply taking care of something that needs attention. You see the work, take ownership, and make sure it gets done.

You bring perspective and operational discipline. You can take an ambiguous problem, make sense of it, and identify a practical path forward. You use data and evidence to inform your judgment while recognizing that success in an academic environment requires context, relationships, and an understanding of competing priorities. You listen carefully, communicate clearly, and are comfortable offering perspective, raising concerns, and recommending a different approach when appropriate. You build trust, exercise sound judgment, and work effectively with faculty, staff, and university partners.

You are a strong people leader. You create clarity around priorities and expectations, give talented staff room to exercise judgment, and step in when alignment or accountability is needed. You build capable teams and develop people and systems that create the conditions for an excellent faculty and student experience.

What You Bring

• Experience leading complex administrative or operational functions with sound operational judgment and the ability to manage priorities and work across multiple functions.
• Demonstrated success partnering with faculty or other leaders and translating priorities into effective execution.
• Experience leading, developing, and managing professional staff, including setting expectations, building accountability, and strengthening team capability.
• Demonstrated ability to design, improve, and implement administrative processes, systems, and workflows.
• Experience in higher education administration, with demonstrated leadership of academic programs at the graduate and/or undergraduate level.
• Direct experience supporting students through advising, admissions, onboarding, and milestone progression.
• Strong analytical and data literacy, with the ability to understand budgets and use financial, programmatic, staffing, and operational information to support decision-making.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and the ability to work credibly with faculty leaders, staff, administrators, and institutional partners.
• Strong relationship-building skills and demonstrated success working across organizational boundaries.
• A leadership orientation grounded in service, accountability, and collaboration.

Key Areas of Responsibility

Strategic Partnership & Leadership

• Serve as a key member of departmental leadership teams, providing operational and strategic partnership to faculty leadership across multiple departments and programs.
• Translate academic and institutional priorities into operational plans, ensuring administrative resources and support align with faculty and program needs.
• Identify operational needs and challenges and provide faculty leadership with information, recommendations, and options to support decision-making.
• Build strong working relationships with university partners, faculty leadership, and the Dean's Office to advance shared goals and resolve issues.
• Represent departments in meetings, committees, and planning efforts as needed.

Program Management & Student Success

• Oversee administrative operations supporting teaching assignments, course scheduling, enrollment, and other recurring academic program activities in partnership with faculty leadership and university offices.
• Lead student services functions including onboarding, orientation, advising support, registration coordination, and academic milestone progression.
• Ensure academic programs and students receive consistent, timely, and high-quality administrative support.
• Partner with faculty leadership to monitor student progression and identify concerns, trends, or administrative barriers requiring attention.
• Maintain current knowledge of university policies and procedures and ensure program operations remain compliant and well informed.
• Work with the Office of Undergraduate Education and other university offices to resolve program and student matters and support smooth delivery of academic programs.

Administrative & Operations Management

• Lead administrative operations across departments, ensuring services, systems, and workflows are effective, coordinated, and responsive and that the administrative work provides seamless support for the academic mission.
• Improve administrative processes and workflows to increase efficiency, consistency, clarity, and service.
• Establish clear operational practices and responsibilities and address bottlenecks, gaps, or inefficiencies.
• Monitor key indicators including enrollment, student progression, staffing, budget, and operational performance to identify needs and opportunities for improvement.
• Partner with faculty leadership and business and financial operations staff to align departmental priorities with available resources.
• Partner with the Assistant Director of Business and Financial Operations to support sound fiscal management, accurate reporting, and adherence to budget and institutional requirements.

Team Leadership

• Lead, supervise, and develop a team of academic programs, business and financial operations, and other administrative staff.
• Build a service-oriented culture characterized by accountability, a sense of community, and shared responsibility for supporting faculty, students, and academic programs.
• Establish clear roles, priorities, expectations, and accountability while enabling staff to exercise appropriate judgment and ownership.
• Foster staff engagement through consistent communication, recognition, collaboration, and opportunities for growth.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree
• 5+ years relevant professional experience
• 2+ years of formal managerial experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Higher Education
• Experience with Student Information Systems (SIS or Stellic) or SAFM

Physical Demands

This is primarily a sedentary job involving extensive use of desktop computers. The job does occasionally require traveling some distance to attend meetings and programs.

Pay

The anticipated hiring range is $110,000–$115,000, commensurate with education and experience. This is an exempt-level, benefited position.

Schedule

This position is based in Charlottesville, VA, and must be performed fully on-site.