Job description
University Information and Technology (
UIT
) is seeking an Executive Director: Digital Research Infrastructure (
DRI
). This is a full-time (1.00
FTE
), 12-month, professional faculty position.
OSU is a Carnegie Very High Research Activity institution with more than 32,000 students and greater than $400M in research grants in 2022. OSU is one of only two universities to hold Land, Sea, Space and Sun Grant status. OSU is home to many exceptional faculty and research programs. It is also home to remarkable research facilities, such as ships from the NSF research fleet, research “cyber-forests”, agricultural research stations, and the Linus Pauling Institute, among other noteworthy, shared research resources. OSU is developing an aggressive plan to expand its research enterprise, aiming to double research revenues by the next decade.
OSU is a Carnegie Very High Research Activity institution with more than 32,000 students and greater than $400M in research grants in 2022. OSU is one of only two universities to hold Land, Sea, Space and Sun Grant status. OSU is home to many exceptional faculty and research programs. It is also home to remarkable research facilities, such as ships from the NSF research fleet, research “cyber-forests”, agricultural research stations, and the Linus Pauling Institute, among other noteworthy, shared research resources. OSU is developing an aggressive plan to expand its research enterprise, aiming to double research revenues by the next decade.
The Vice Provost for Information & Technology, and Chief Information Officer, is the senior OSU official responsible for the health of OSU’s IT enterprise, including both central and distributed IT resources. The Executive Director for Digital Research Infrastructure (DRI) will report to the CIO and act on the CIO’s behalf to ensure alignment and coordination between central and distributed research computing resources and their support for the university’s goals for the growth of its research enterprise research.
The university has a clear strategic plan, which is being updated, and a companion IT Strategic Plan. The IT Strategic Plan’s vision is to create a vibrant, digitally empowered community, while ensuring that “OSU IT” (the combination of the universities central and distributed IT organizations) can create capabilities based on organizational needs and ensure IT alignment with OSU’s strategic directions. This new position will be a leader in advancing OSU’s research mission by developing a world-class research computing service for the institution in support of the IT Strategic Plan.
Specifically, the Executive Director for DRI will lead the OSU IT Strategic Plan strategy to “implement an architected, easier-to-navigate, university-scale digital research ecosystem”. Continued research success depends on an ever-expanding use of technology for such purposes as data collection, analysis, modeling, and publication. This ranges from technology at a small scale, such as sensors or personal computers, to technology at a grand scale, like supercomputers and major research instruments. Some of our commitments that support this strategy are:
- We will support faculty success in this environment, helping them stay competitive and meet emerging compliance requirements or achieve new goals like data sharing for reproducibility.
- We will coordinate IT research resources and IT skills across the university to offer a deeper level of expertise, a better quality of digital research infrastructure and more rapidly evolving solutions, including high performance computing, than any one college could offer on its own.
- IT will be a full partner by not only supporting individual faculty with IT needs, but ensuring our IT infrastructure is adaptable and scalable.
University Information & Technology (UIT) is OSU’s central IT organization and the university office responsible for the health, coordination, and guidance of IT services, data, and tools across the university. UIT helps the university community— faculty, researchers, staff, students, partners, and community members—use technology and data to teach, learn, research, and work, and be leaders in their fields, accomplishing the strategic goals of the university for its instructional, service, and research missions. UIT is dedicated to creating cohesive digital experiences and enabling university wide innovation by:
- Elevating the OSU community experience by providing proactive, laser focused customer service
- Providing appropriate IT security and privacy in an open university society, while enabling innovation
- Supporting data-informed decision making
- Delivering intuitive research computing solutions
- Building a world-class, transformational network and reliable administrative and academic systems
Overview of Executive Director’s role
The Executive Director of Digital Research Infrastructure (ED-DRI) is the senior UIT executive with responsibility from the Vice Provost and Chief Information Officer (CIO) for advancing research IT infrastructure and services at the institution to ensure OSU is a leader in research that makes a difference for Oregon and the world. The ED-DRI is a member of the CIO’s executive team and will partner closely with that team to develop services that meet the institution’s and research partner’s expectations and requirements. Collaboration with the other members of the CIO’s Executive Team will be critical as they have organized into architectural domains that provide support to research.
The ED-DRI will form partnerships with distributed IT to find ways to support the research mission in effective and innovative ways. They will manage a matrixed research IT organization made up of UIT and distributed research IT support staff, setting goals, aligning projects and technologies with OSU IT strategic objectives for research support, and determining projects and priorities for that matrixed staff and the infrastructure they manage. The ED-DRI will develop strong relationships with the research enterprise at OSU, from the Research Office to college and departmental research administrators to research faculty, to understand the research computing requirements of the institution. The ED-DRI will also have relationships across higher education institutions and research centers, to influence the adoption of state-of-art research computing as well as to better support OSU researcher needs.
The ED-DRI seeks a university-wide understanding of research, research demand and national and multi-institution research opportunities, and proactively tackles projects, challenges, and opportunities with our research community’s needs in mind. They anticipate problems, leverage customer input and data, and work proactively to preempt challenges and concerns, delivering increasingly high-quality research computing services over time. They understand increasing compliance requirements and understand how to translate them into opportunities for researchers instead of obstacles. They value a culture that is rooted in mutual respect, where they can thrive by engaging with different perspectives, roles, and identities.
The ED-DRI has a flexible and agile mindset and leads initiatives and projects through a formal project or tiger-team approach. They thrive in a shared governance environment and quickly flex between competing priorities and deadlines. They link strategy to execution and have a deep understanding of the university’s operating model. The ED-DRI thinks strategically, plans effectively, has business and financial acumen, is hands on, detail and results oriented, and successfully manages multiple tasks against aggressive deadlines. The ED-RC leads with curiosity, humility, and courage. They make effective use of financial resources and build a pipeline of a diverse, and continually learning staff.
Expectations for the ED- DRI:
The ED-DRI is the IT leader who helps achieve these goals and promotes the success of OSU, by meeting these expectations from our IT Strategic Plan:
- We have strong and pervasive relationships with stakeholders based on active and knowledge-driven engagement.
- We have an architected and continually improving IT service portfolio aligned with university missions and community needs.
- We successfully support research opportunities that grow OSU’s reputation and that of the individual researcher.
- We develop support that simplifies research computing access.
- We are partners with the OSU Research Enterprise.
Overview of Office of the
CIO
:
As the office of the CIO, we value those individuals that proactively solve challenges, work with a sense of urgency, and seek a collaborative and inclusive work environment. All team members meet these commitments:
- We commit to deliver data as a strategic working asset and to enable data informed decision making across OSU. UIT leaders and staff lead by example and use data to inform decision making at all levels in the organization. Persons in technology roles are also expected to design systems with data portability in mind and work within enterprise architecture and privacy guidelines.
- We commit to and believe in the strength and value of diversity, equity, inclusion, and access (DEIA) both throughout our team and as an intentional and active practice to advance the vision, mission, and strategic efforts of the entire university. As a member of the UIT community, the person in this position is expected to foster and promote the values of DEIA and demonstrate a commitment to inclusive excellence in their work.
- Proactively securing and protecting OSU’s digital assets and information systems is crucial to our missions of teaching and learning, research, and extension and engagement. All OSU IT professionals are directly responsible for providing high quality and secure IT systems and services. Persons in technology roles are expected to be responsive to security related actions and requirements, and to collaborate to find secure ways to support the OSU community.
Working for Oregon State University is so much more than a job!
Oregon State University is a dynamic community of dreamers, doers, problem-solvers and change-makers. We don’t wait for challenges to present themselves — we seek them out and take them on. We welcome students, faculty and staff from every background and perspective into a community where everyone feels seen and heard. We have deep-rooted mindfulness for the natural world and all who depend on it, and together, we apply knowledge, tools and skills to build a better future for all.
FACTS :
Locations:
Oregon State has a statewide presence with campuses in Corvallis and Bend, the OSU Portland Center and the Hatfield Marine Science Center on the Pacific Coast in Newport.
Oregon State’s beautiful, historic and state-of-the-art main campus is located in one of America’s best college towns. Corvallis is located close to the Pacific Ocean, the Cascade mountains and Oregon wine county. Nestled in the heart of the Willamette Valley, this beautiful city offers miles of mountain biking and hiking trails, a river perfect for boating or kayaking and an eclectic downtown featuring local cuisine, popular events and performances.
Total Rewards Package:
Oregon State University offers a comprehensive benefits package with benefits eligible positions that is designed to meet the needs of employees and their families including:
Future and current OSU employees can use the Benefits Calculator to learn more about the full value of the benefits provided at OSU.
Position Duties
Oregon State University is a dynamic community of dreamers, doers, problem-solvers and change-makers. We don’t wait for challenges to present themselves — we seek them out and take them on. We welcome students, faculty and staff from every background and perspective into a community where everyone feels seen and heard. We have deep-rooted mindfulness for the natural world and all who depend on it, and together, we apply knowledge, tools and skills to build a better future for all.
FACTS :
- Top 1.4% university in the world
- More research funding than all public universities in Oregon combined
- 1 of 3 land, sea, space and sun grant universities in the U.S.
- 2 campuses, 11 colleges, 12 experiment stations, and Extension programs in all 36 counties
- 7 cultural resource centers that offer education, celebration and belonging for everyone
- 100+ undergraduate degree programs, 80+ graduate degrees plus hundreds of minor options and certificates
- 35k+ students including more than 2.3k international students and 10k students of color
- 217k+ alumni worldwide
- For more interesting facts about OSU visit: https://oregonstate.edu/about
Locations:
Oregon State has a statewide presence with campuses in Corvallis and Bend, the OSU Portland Center and the Hatfield Marine Science Center on the Pacific Coast in Newport.
Oregon State’s beautiful, historic and state-of-the-art main campus is located in one of America’s best college towns. Corvallis is located close to the Pacific Ocean, the Cascade mountains and Oregon wine county. Nestled in the heart of the Willamette Valley, this beautiful city offers miles of mountain biking and hiking trails, a river perfect for boating or kayaking and an eclectic downtown featuring local cuisine, popular events and performances.
Total Rewards Package:
Oregon State University offers a comprehensive benefits package with benefits eligible positions that is designed to meet the needs of employees and their families including:
- Medical, Dental, Vision and Basic Life. OSU pays 95% of premiums for you and your eligible dependents.
- Retirement savings paid by the university.
- A generous paid leave package, including holidays, vacation and sick leave.
- Tuition reduction benefits for you or your qualifying dependents at OSU or the additional six Oregon Public Universities.
- Robust Work Life programs including Dual Career assistance resources, flexible work arrangements, a Family Resource Center, Affinity Groups and an Employee Assistance Program.
Future and current OSU employees can use the Benefits Calculator to learn more about the full value of the benefits provided at OSU.
80% Leadership & Strategy
- Actively participates as a representative of OSU in the national research cyberinfrastructure community (CARCC, CASC, ACCESS, …) to gain and share knowledge for OSU
- Maintains positive relationships with federal agencies that fund research computing infrastructure and resources
- Fosters development of regional and statewide research computing partnerships
- Enhances the regional and national visibility and presence of OSU’s cyberinfrastructure in academic, federal, and private sectors.
- Develops and maintains strategic relationships with IT vendors that supply critical components of OSU’s research computing infrastructure or that can add to OSU’s research capabilities
- Improves OSU’s competitiveness for federal research opportunities.
- Maintain in-depth knowledge of IT industry best practices, technologies, architectures and emerging technologies related to supporting research.
- Develops and maintains campus cyberinfrastructure and other research computing strategies and plans that …
- lead to strengthening of university computing resources and services
- coordination of resources and services to produce a seamless experience for researchers
- enhance faculty competitiveness for external research funding
- support compliance with emerging federal compliance requirements
- Employs best practices and structured research architecture frameworks and methodologies to develop IT strategies, in partnership with UIT’s leadership, that fully align with OSU IT strategies.
- Works with the colleges, research institutes and the Research Office to strategically grow research capacity and capability in line with OSU’s strategic plans
- Manages a matrixed digital research infrastructure organization made up of IT staff and infrastructure from across OSU that delivers services and infrastructure in a coordinated manner to support OSU’s research objectives.
- Evaluates success of plans and strategies
- Chairs the Digital Research Infrastructure governance sub-committee spanning OSU IT and the distributed research community to facilitate collaboration and develop standards for research computing. That group helps advise research computing directions for OSU IT, advise on internal allocation of computing resources, and to have oversight on resource utilization.
- Serves as the chief evangelist for research computing infrastructure at OSU, resulting in the broadened impact of a coordinated seamless university-scale research computing practice at OSU
- Develops relationships with university researchers that position OSU for success with large research funding opportunities.
- Serves as a co-PI or lead-PI on research proposals, including research infrastructure proposals.
- Considering needs across all scales from small to “big”, across all modalities of research, and across the lifecycle of research projects from planning through publication and data preservation/sharing, determines the content of the research computing service portfolio, addressing these and other needs:
- Provides software and workflow engineering services to the university research community
- Implements research data management solutions to meet funding agencies’ requirements for the research data lifecycle.
- In conjunction with the Executive Director, Technical & Solutions Architecture to adopt, engineer and implement physical and cloud infrastructure for the university research community
- In conjunction with the Chief Information Security Officer, provide high compliance research support for the OSU research community.
- Develops technical and service solutions for complex research computing needs and provides expertise to other strategic initiatives.
- Develops cost-effective and efficient research computing financial support models that allow for researcher planning in the grant writing cycle
20% Coach & Supervision
- Provide direct and indirect supervision of team members within DRI.
- Determine training needs for the OSU IT Research workforce and plan and deliver appropriate training.
- Plan, assign and review work of personnel within Research Computing.
- Evaluate performance of staff.
- Initiate disciplinary actions; reward employee performance.
- A bachelor’s degree in a science or engineering based field of study.
- 10 years of experience relevant to supporting research with increasing scope and responsibility at a research university
- 5 or more years of experience with supporting development of research grant proposals.
- Experience engaging with diverse stakeholders to create long-standing relationships that facilitate successful research programs
- Experience with collaborative approaches to university leadership that promote and generate cooperation to achieve collective outcomes and foster the development of a common vision
- Experience with participation in IT governance and planning of IT governance committee activities as a core component of a stakeholder engagement strategy
- Experience with organizational change management that supports innovation and improves the organization’s effectiveness, including experience supporting, initiating, sponsoring, implementing, and helping others successfully manage organizational change
- Experience as an effective leader as an agent of change and modernization, including demonstrated experience promoting diversity, equity, inclusion and access through the planning, implementation, or operation of information technology systems or services, and of actively contributing to inclusive research and working environments.
- Proven ability to establish and direct the focus of an IT unit and develop and communicate goals in support of institutional and IT’s missions and strategies.
- Exceptional written and oral communication skills, with experience presenting to and influencing executive level stakeholders; ability to listen and drive constructive conversations. Solid analytical skills, utilizing data and applying critical thinking to form recommendations and analyze problems.
- Demonstrated experience with coaching and mentoring of teams. Including proven ability to build and foster teamwork within a unit and across an organization as both a team member and leader, including demonstrated ability to work cooperatively with others, successfully organize teams to work cooperatively together, and enlist the active participation of diverse groups of people with different perspectives.
This position is designated as a critical or security-sensitive position; therefore, the incumbent must successfully complete a criminal history check and be determined to be position qualified as per University Standard: 05-010 et seq. Incumbents are required to self-report convictions and those in youth programs may have additional criminal history checks every 24 months.
Preferred (Special) Qualifications
- Masters or PhD in Computer Science or a science-based field of study.
- Experience in successful multi-institution research projects.
This position may provide essential services during time of emergencies and inclement weather. This position may be required to fulfill essential services and functions during these times. Hybrid schedule for in-person and remote work negotiable.
This position requires a clear and unambiguous commitment to compliance of all National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) regulations for Division I (FBS) universities. No
Posting Detail Information
Posting Number
P06867UF
Number of Vacancies
1
Anticipated Appointment Begin Date
06/12/2023
Anticipated Appointment End Date
Posting Date
05/16/2023
Full Consideration Date
Closing Date
05/31/2023
Indicate how you intend to recruit for this search
Competitive / External - open to ALL qualified applicants
Special Instructions to Applicants
When applying you will be required to attach the following electronic documents:
1) A resume/CV; and
2) A cover letter indicating how your qualifications and experience have prepared you for this position.
You will also be required to submit the names of at least three professional references, their e-mail addresses and telephone numbers as part of the application process.
You will also be required to submit the names of at least three professional references, their e-mail addresses and telephone numbers as part of the application process.
For additional information please contact: Amy McLaughlin at amy.mclaughlin@oregonstate.edu
OSU is committed to the health of our local and global community. All employees and students are required to comply with the university’s COVID-19 Vaccination Program. Please visit
https://covid.oregonstate.edu/ for additional information about OSU’s plans for safety and success, as well as options for compliance with the vaccination program.
OSU commits to inclusive excellence by advancing equity and diversity in all that we do. We are an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer, and particularly encourage applications from members of historically underrepresented racial/ethnic groups, women, individuals with disabilities, veterans, LGBTQ community members, and others who demonstrate the ability to help us achieve our vision of a diverse and inclusive community.
OSU will conduct a review of the National Sex Offender Public website prior to hire.
Starting salary within the salary range will be commensurate with skills, education, and experience.
This position is designated as a critical or security-sensitive position; therefore, the incumbent must successfully complete a criminal history check and be determined to be position qualified as per University Standard 05-010 et seq. Incumbents are required to self-report convictions and those in youth programs may have additional criminal history checks every 24 months. Offers of employment are contingent upon meeting all minimum qualifications including the criminal history check requirement.
Starting salary within the salary range will be commensurate with skills, education, and experience.
This position is designated as a critical or security-sensitive position; therefore, the incumbent must successfully complete a criminal history check and be determined to be position qualified as per University Standard 05-010 et seq. Incumbents are required to self-report convictions and those in youth programs may have additional criminal history checks every 24 months. Offers of employment are contingent upon meeting all minimum qualifications including the criminal history check requirement.
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