Senior Administrative Assistant to the Dean - School of Health Sciences

About the role

The Senior Administrative Assistant to the Dean provides expert administrative support to the Dean. Key responsibilities include answering phones, scheduling appointments and travel, reconciling expense reporting, composing acknowledgement letters, maintaining confidential information, and other administrative tasks. This role also involves collaborating with other Dean's Office and departmental staff, managing the Dean's calendar, and assisting with special projects.

Responsibilities

• Answer phones and schedule appointments and travel
• Reconcile expense reporting
• Compose acknowledgement letters
• Maintain confidential information
• Support the Dean in meetings and prepare materials
• Manage the Dean's calendar, including making appointments, travel arrangements, and conference/event registrations
• Create task lists and follow up to ensure timely completion of projects
• Ensure the Dean is informed of priorities, deadlines, and challenges
• Coordinate meetings with detailed meeting plan management and record minutes or notes of meetings as required
• Maintain and manage a database of contacts to assist with tracking internal and external contacts
• Use multiple computer applications and university systems/platforms to support key administrative functions
• Aid in drafting briefing documents and memos, correspondence, and other communications projects on the Dean's behalf
• Write and edit emails, create PowerPoint presentations, coordinate monthly reporting, and maintain complex Excel spreadsheets
• Manage and prioritize multiple projects in a dynamic, fast-paced environment
• Respond to a wide variety of requests for information, ensuring situations and issues are appropriately managed and forwarded to appropriate staff members for resolution
• Analyze needs and problems to determine approach and priority
• Make high-level contacts of a sensitive nature regarding routine and non-routine issues internally and externally, requiring a high degree of discretion and diplomacy and time sensitivity
• Prioritize issues according to urgency
• Multi-task with demanding timeframes
• Provide back-up administrative support to other areas in the School as necessary
• Available periodically during off-hours (evenings and weekends)
• Manage special projects and events, requiring a combined knowledge of administrative, logistical, and technical operations
• Respond to a wide variety of requests for information, ensuring situations and issues are appropriately managed as well as forwarded to appropriate staff members for resolution

Qualifications and Credentials

• Three to five years’ prior experience in supporting an executive
• Bachelor’s degree in business, human resources management, or healthcare-related field
• Operate independently with minimal supervision
• Advanced technical and computer skills to support administrative functions including MS Office Suite with an emphasis on PowerPoint, Excel, and database skills, electronic calendar management, various videoconferencing applications such as Teams etc., and email applications
• Detail-oriented, self-starter and results-driven achiever with excellent organizational and project management skills, strong attention to detail, and ability to multi-task with demanding timeframes
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment and operate with a high sense of urgency, manage multiple assignments, set priorities, and adapt to changing conditions
• Strong analytical/problem-solving skills using sound judgment within policy parameters
• Provides high quality customer service orientation
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills to communicate effectively with all levels of staff both verbally and in writing, with excellent editing and proofreading ability; must be an exceptional listener
• Ability to use high-level discretion and maintain a high level of confidentiality in all aspects of services provided
• Diplomacy, professional appearance and demeanor, and excellent attendance
• Social perceptiveness, being aware of others’ reactions and understanding why they react as they do

Preferred Qualifications

• Project management training preferred but not required

Physical and Sensory Abilities

• Occasionally required to travel to local and campus locations
• Frequently required to sit for extended periods to perform deskwork or type on a keyboard
• Regularly required to hear and speak in order to effectively communicate orally
• Occasionally required to stand, walk, and climb stairs to move about the building
• Regularly lift 10 or fewer pounds