Director of Applied AI for Academic Initiatives
- Compensation
- $137K–$145K
- Location
- Worcester, MA
- Work setup
- Not specified
- Seniority
- Not specified
- Employment
- Fellowship
- Experience
- Not specified
- Category
- Ai engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Master's degree in learning design, instructional technology, education, a relevant disciplinary field, or a closely related area. Doctorate preferred.
- Five or more years of relevant professional experience, including experience in higher education.
- Demonstrated expertise in learning design or instructional design, with a record of substantive partnership with faculty.
- Demonstrated experience supporting faculty research or scholarly work, and the credibility to hold a research conversation across unfamiliar disciplines.
- Working knowledge of contemporary artificial intelligence tools and their application, including large language models and agentic systems, together with the judgment to evaluate them critically rathe
- Experience mentoring or advising student research, or a demonstrated aptitude for it.
- Familiarity with grant-seeking or sponsored research support is preferred.
- Familiarity with learning science, including the roles of retrieval practice, spacing, and desirable difficulty in producing durable learning.
- Evidence of building something new, such as a program, lab, or practice, rather than only operating something established.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical matters to non-technical audiences.
- Experience in a liberal arts setting preferred.
Full description
At Holy Cross, we are focused on creating a world-class workforce by attracting and retaining employees dedicated to fostering a culture of professionalism, pride, mutual trust, and respect—one that values appreciation and recognition, empowering each of us to flourish both individually and collectively. We seek candidates who are inspired by our mission and values, and who are eager to make a meaningful difference on our campus. Learn more about Life at Holy Cross here.
The Director of Applied AI for Academic Initiatives leads the College's applied use of artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies across research, teaching, learning, and student development. The role is deliberately cross-disciplinary: it works with a chemist evaluating whether agentic systems can open new experimental avenues as readily as with a colleague in student affairs studying how these tools affect student development.
With a designee of the Office of the Provost, the Director helps establish and lead a new AI Exploration Lab. The Lab is not only a teaching and learning space. A central part of its purpose, and of this role, is to shepherd and curate student-led research: helping students scope viable questions, pairing them with faculty mentors and appropriate tooling, and bringing their work to a standard worth showing. The Director also tracks external funding in this domain and helps faculty pursue it.
The Director works in close partnership with the Learning Design team and the Center for Inclusive Excellence in Teaching, contributing applied artificial intelligence expertise to the work they lead. It is a role for someone as credible in a faculty research conversation as in a technical one, and who understands that the most useful answer is sometimes to recommend against the technology.
Job DescriptionMajor Areas of ResponsibilityResearch enablement and domain acceleration
- Partner with faculty across disciplines to evaluate where artificial intelligence, including agentic systems, can genuinely advance research, from literature synthesis and experimental design through data analysis and interpretation.
- Assess feasibility in laboratory and computational disciplines, such as whether agentic approaches can open new avenues in biochemical research, and design pilots with the faculty who would use them.
- Advise on research computing needs, tooling, data handling, provenance, and reproducibility in artificial-intelligence-assisted scholarship.
- Support faculty and staff studying the impact of artificial intelligence on student development and co-curricular life, contributing to the design of that inquiry and to the interpretation of its findings.
AI Exploration Lab and student-led research
- Help establish and lead the AI Exploration Lab in partnership with a designee of the Office of the Provost, including its purpose, operating model, and terms of responsible experimentation.