Job Title: Program Quality Director – Grade 6
Location: Philadelphia
Hours Required: 40 per week
Reports To: Chief Operating Officer

Position Summary: The Program Quality Director will develop and direct a broad range of outcomes measurement, evaluation and research strategies. Through these activities CCCSDV will ascertain its level of effectiveness in fulfilling its mission to positively impact human lives and communities through comprehensive consumer credit education, counseling, asset building and debt reduction programs, without regard to economic status. The program quality work is intended to support the design and management of new programs, guide improvement in existing programs, create replicable models of service delivery and shape financial counseling and education advocacy.

The ideal candidate will have experience in the evaluation of internal and external data, strong project management skills, excellent verbal, written and interpersonal communication skills and demonstrate a commitment to qualitative and quantitative research methods as they apply to mission-based organizations. Must have experience in researching, planning, conducting, presenting and effectively communicating research and evaluation results to internal and external stakeholders.

Qualifications:

• Master’s degree and/or equivalent work experience, ideally in applied research, psychology/social sciences, statistical data analysis, program evaluation or other relevant field.
• Preference for 5+ years experience with 3+ years supervisory experience, ideally in social service organizations, financial education or services, credit counseling or a non-profit organization.
• Excellent oral and written communication skills required.
• Candidate must have the ability to work well with multi-functional teams and in providing relevant and actionable information.
• An energetic, independent thinker and self-starter
• Expertise in Microsoft Office including Excel required; knowledge in Access, SPSS or other statistical programming software or DMS database a plus

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Essential Functions:

Build Research & Evaluation Capacity

• Initiate and implement agency-level as well as program-level research strategies to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of CCCSDV programs
• Provide strategic insight for agency leadership team on program and agency quality and opportunities through the thoughtful application of meaningful and actionable data
• Coordinate the collection, integration, analysis and interpretation of internal agency data (e.g. surveys, client information systems, etc.)
• Coordinate and oversee external research, working with and managing grant proposals, the RFP process and external consultants as needed.
• Partner with Marketing & Communications and Grants Directors in clear and effective communication of research and analysis to various stakeholder audiences (i.e. funders, grantors, board, management team, staff, clients)
• Conduct internal briefings/trainings for CCCSDV staff and board to build internal research and evaluation capacity
• Maintain and create monthly and quarterly reports for the management team and the board to assess agency-level and program level effectiveness

Program Quality Management

• Define, develop and manage budget needs of all program quality initiatives
• Work closely with the agency program leadership to provide participation and outcome data on all education and counseling programs
• Work with program directors and staff to maximize utilization of data and research for program improvements
• Partner with agency staff to create, adapt and implement user-friendly systems and processes to collect, analyze and report qualitative and quantitative data on new and existing programs
• Continually evaluate existing and new research methods and outcome measurement instruments (e.g. surveys, client information databases) to insure the appropriate data is being collected to meet agency and stakeholder needs
• Partner with Grants Manager to fully understand all requirements, deliverables and timetables for grant funded programs
• Assist Grants Manager in writing portions of grant applications and reports that are related to program evaluation and outcome measurement
• Conduct external industry research on best practices and trends in financial education and counseling program quality assessment
• Represent agency on external committees and with research partners related to quality programming

Staff Management & Development

• Manage and direct staff members
• Conduct annual employee performance evaluations and on-going coaching and development
• Monitor and measure staff workloads and ensure appropriate staff scheduling to maximize effectiveness
• Responsible for recruitment and termination of department staff
• Work closely with Vice President of HR to assess staff skill levels and competencies, identify training and development needs

Professional Skills

• Communicate accurately and clearly to internal employees and external partners
• Compose correspondence and presentations with proper spelling, grammar and articulation.
• Maintain regular and predictable attendance
• Work a flexible schedule and non-traditional working hours when required to meet business need
• Perform special projects and/or assignments as directed by the Chief Operating Officer or other members of the management team

James Curry, the newly-past President of the now defunct AAA, stated the organization had no choice. “Look, it’s all been done. All of it. We have talked to every god forsaken group on the planet, and there is nothing left to study.” “Frankly there is not even a job market out there for students.” Increasingly graduate students of these former anthropology programs have found themselves with little to do even when trying to complete their dissertations, much less do meaningful publishing. John Gault from Indiana University talks about hardships in the field: “I originally wanted to work with the Tsohon-djapa tribe living in the Javari region of Brazil. Turns out the F’ing Discovery Channel gave one of the kids there an HD webcam that runs 24/7. Now my dissertation is on some group of freaks outside of town that worship an old incandescent light bulb with a grease smudge that appears to be the image of Jesus. This blows”

To hasten the demise of the former organization, the AAA is recommending the destruction of all books, letters, monographs, white papers, dissertations and even master’s thesis work in the former field of Cultural Anthropology. The committee began by burning the minutes of their own meetings along with the abstracts and agendas of every meeting and conference the AAA has even been a part of.

Foster Kerry, the head of the committee was thrilled with the move.  “I am very excited for this new untouched field. Just imagine all of those utterly primitive cultures out there, such as Ireland, we know nothing about. With the advent of transportation like the steamship and the auto-mobile we have access to so many other places. Up to this point what we know about these primitive peoples are from the writings of missionaries. 2010 looks to be a great year for this new field of study.”

Not everyone is so pleased Martin Cost, a full professor at Walknut University has serious concerns about the announcement. “What the HELL, what the hell does this do to my Tenure!?” was the first official statement from Dr. Cost when informed of the move by APG reporters. “I am not doing that fieldwork crap again, no way.  My whole career has vanished.” APG asked one of Dr. Cost’s graduate students to comment on the potential destruction of most tenured faculty members careers, including Dr. Cost. That graduate student stated “BAHAHAHAHAHA!  HAHAHAHAH! HAHAHAHAHHAHA!”

Dr. Curry has some understanding for the concern.  “Look its true; teaching positions, publishing, tenure, sex with natives before any ethics are laid out, are totally up for grabs at this point. Right now we have a lot of High School PE teachers filling in at their local colleges and universities teaching “health studies” until some real research gets underway.  We expect this to be a banner year for grants, people love to fund new fields of study.”

An ad-hoc committee has already been formed to discuss what to name this new field and set-up a professional organization. It is likely to focus on documenting the ways the simple, primitive, innocent folk lived before we were corrupted by modern conveniences.  A overall “Study of Man” if you will.

Librarians nationwide also hailed the move for freeing up an enormous amount of space in the countries libraries which is now expected to be used for coffee and pastry kiosks.

Part of your strategy is understanding that your instructor is also concerned with time management strategies. Every assignment given to a class means X number of papers to read and grade, questions to answer and whining students to deal with. This is on top of the need to publish, serve on committees and worse if the professor is coming up for tenure review. If a teacher has four full classes a semester and assigns nothing but papers to each class. Call it 4 classes X 30 students each X 4 papers per student X 10 pages each, that comes to 4,800 pages of work that have to be read and graded each semester. and that number is on the conservative side.

Knowing your instructor and their expectations is a big part making strategic choices. If you don’t know the needs of the client, then you really are shooting in the dark. Make it simple, GO TALK TO THEM. This is what office hours are for. Unsure if you are headed in the right direction on a paper? Why on earth wait until you turn it in to see if you guessed right? Go to them with an outline of the idea and your approach to the paper. When they offer “suggestions” as to a better approach, or more reasonable topic (more on reasonable topics later), take the suggestion without complaint or excuse. If they think it’s a bad idea, don’t take it personally. Move on to a different idea. Don’t expect your Prof to indulge your interest in science-fiction or fantasy literature in a class on medieval literature. If you really love renaissance festivals and spend all year long making your costume for it, they may not be interested in letting you claim that as a “class project.” Your idea may simply lack sufficient credibility for academic work. MOVE ON. More time is wasted by students stubbornly hanging on to some idea that their Prof as already said is simply a load of dingo’s kidneys. MOVE ON.

What does time management mean? It is simply developing a strategy that helps you set reachable and realistic goals that treats school as something akin to a job. School is not the same as a job, I know that. In the US, heading off to college represents all kinds of milestones and transitions towards adulthood including making a lot of really stupid mistakes. Since stupid mistakes are part of life, you may as well factor this in and manage the parts you can. But if you can put yourself into the mindset that school IS your fulltime job, it might help with things like procrastination (my all time largest problem in school). That part-time job you have in the library, or as a teaching assistant or else-where are something you have to do to make ends meet, but school is your fulltime job. (This is referring to fulltime students. Part time students are often already fighting a massive time management battle).

In addition to getting those “Ah Ha” moments that we all love, there are some very basic tangible goals you want to hit: Graduate in 4 years, 5 at the outside with the GPA, experiences, training and recommendations you need to take you next step, no matter what that may be. School is about more than the GPA and getting out, but school is also expensive and your GPA at the end matters, so it is in your best interest to keep that in the back of your mind.

First rule: Incompletes are bad debt. Very Bad Debt. No matter what else you take away from here, learn that taking an Incomplete at the end of a class should be seen as a last option. You would be amazed at how often someone’s college career gets derailed due to piling up incompletes. No, your instructor will not take pity on you because its 5 days to graduation and that one incomplete is in your way. When you have an incomplete, you have very little room to negotiate. You don’t even have the option to take a lower grade if the instructor decides you have to finish that paper or project to complete the course. Never take an incomplete? Well, that’s strategy isn’t it? It’s much better than an F or D or maybe a C, but if it is a class outside your major and you really don’t want to spend more time on it, would you rather have the B or the bad debt of an incomplete that can become an F? I once knew someone that took an incomplete to get an A+ instead of an A, maybe I am a slacker, but that is insane given how much riskier the Incomplete is. Also instructors talk, if people find out you are taking several incompletes, they are going to stop giving you that option. Remember that taking the Incomplete is not your choice, it is your instructors. They have no obligation to give you one because its it bad debt for them as well! They have to give you a grade, chase you down before it becomes an F and listen to your excuse because you keep putting off that paper or project you owe them. If you are piling up incompletes, you may need to lay out a semester just to get them off the plate. Having an incomplete is mentally the same as carrying over that (or those) class(es) into your next course load.

Oh hell, you already have an incomplete? Weren’t you just reading all that… ok, ok, fine. I’ll calm down. Either you have screwed up badly or some legitimate misfortune befell you at the last part of the semester. All we can do now is move forward. That incomplete is a big pile of rotting food in your kitchen and you have GOT to clean that up before it gets into the rest of the food and really stinks up the whole house. To start with, there is no easy solution that will not increase you workload unless you have some miracle deal with the instructor. You cannot “borrow time” from your existing work load. If you take that attitude you are looking at a domino effect of incompletes. Is it starting to sink in why this Incomplete of yours is a big friggin deal?

There is only one way out of this: give up your free time to finish the job. That it, the only solution.

You can’t take the time from the work you already have to do, like the 500 pages of reading you were assigned over the weekend that you weren’t going to do anyway. I KNOW how hard this is, I am a terrible procrastinator and we are the worse kind of people to have incompletes because the deadline is often vaguely out there, but not quite real. The longer you take, the better the final product is expected to be! Maybe this is one of those “screw it, I will do a little worse work and take a B for the paper” moments on this particular project. But you have to turn in something or risk getting a failing grade. I am not going to even say you are going to feel better getting it off your plate. Having to finish this Incomplete is going to put you behind on your other work that you will have to double up on to prevent it from going incomplete. By the way, if we are talking about a 10 page double spaced paper please don’t write and tell me. I will run screaming from the room. This blog entry is nearly four pages double spaced using Arial 10 point font. 10 pages is really not that big a deal.

Make a plan, set a drop dead date and make your idea realistic: What is the minimum you have to do to get the grade you want. My apologies to my faculty friends, but this is triage and the crass reality of it. Your goal is not to win the undergraduate award for writing, it’s to get the incomplete off you plate. Scale back as much as you can: do you really need 40 sources or will 10 do? Is the instructor looking for regurgitation of their pet ideas or original thought on your part? Being that challenging student during the class is great. But now it’s an incomplete, a pain in the ass and not the time to get clever. Have you got a draft? Great, drop it off at the professors office. You might not get comments, but it shows a good faith effort on your part towards meeting your commitment. If they do comment, you might lucky and they say “hey, if you just add a paragraph about X, we are good to go.” And please dear Lord, don’t drop off an idea they already rejected and this is that same dumbass, irrelevant, unrealistic idea that you stubbornly hung on to and got you that incomplete in the first place. LET IT GO. I have watched people do that very thing. I don’t know what insanity overtakes them, but for the love of Pete, knock that crap off.

Do that incomplete: Do it this weekend, do it over two weekends if you have to. Unless that paper is huge, two hard weekends can cover it.

If you currently have an incomplete, leave a comment with the date you commit to having it finished. Did you just finish an incomplete? Let us know in the comments. Motivation is a big part of getting it done so motivate each other!

But what to natter on about? I don’t have much interest in the debate about the military/cultural anthropology “conversation” any more. People have made their calls on a personal and professional level, and will go about their business as personal conscience leads them. The grassroots are wiser than the self-appointed protectors of the purity (read: ossification) of the field. It was fun to poke a stick at people for a while, but you can only make self-righteous people dance around and screech for so long before its boring again.  Now, if they screeched something different every time, that would keep my interest.  But, sadly it’s the same reason video games don’t keep my attention… not enough variety.  They are sort of like watching Glenn Beck, you don’t need more that a couple of minutes to get the gist of it.  Then it’s like watching Seinfeld.

I’ll still write about design and innovation from time to time.. I was in the field for 15 years as a design anthropologist and still enjoy it.  But what else?  I am not doing anything the looks like ethnography anymore and there is not much pissing me off these days, my life is pretty damn dull.  I do a lot of book research and some consulting.  I still have my “what am I issues.”  Am I an anthropologist, yes… am I doing anthropology these days… no.

Here is what I have been working on for the last few months, as a hobby not a job mind you: Learning and playing Texas Hold ‘em poker.  A totally fascinating, difficult, frustrating game filled with a combination of science, individual heuristics and folklore.  But that is what I do for fun in my spare time these days.  I play very low limit games (for example, what some would call penny ante and very low stakes tournaments).  I pour over my hand histories, read books on strategy and mostly gnash my teeth over my routinely poor play.  I am not getting any better, so we will see how long this lasts.  The Ordinary People Project lies fallow for the moment for no reason other than laziness.

But there are other bloggers here and they add their interests and we will be adding new bloggers soon.

What would you like to see more of?