Job Description
Based within the wider King’s Online (KO) and King’s Professional & Executive Development (KPED) team, this role will play a key part in ensuring KO and KPED respond to the university’s plans for growth in professional education and to extend access to a King’s education. The Programme & Partnerships Manager is part of the Operations Team and will lead on two of our most exciting new ventures: the stackable postgraduate awards / micro-credentials (our new flexible multidisciplinary awards in Professional Development) and the management of our partnerships with online professional education providers. The post holder will ensure the smooth running of these strategic initiatives and an excellent student experience for our professional participants.
As Programme & Partnerships Manager, you will join us in the year our new stackable awards enrol their first professional participants. Working with the Faculties, central service departments and the wider KO & KPED team, you will take lead responsibility for ensuring the correct set up of programmes on King’s systems ahead of the launch, as well as a seamless enrolment and onboarding experience for our new professional participants. You will work with the Programme Directors and colleagues within the Education & Students Function to lay the administrative groundwork for our first cohort and will manage and monitor their participant journeys. Upon commencement of the programme, you will take the lead in running all aspects of the programme and will be the first point of contact for professional participants, Faculties and central service departments. This is an exciting opportunity to build the programmes from the ground up, helping to define what a professional participants experience looks like at King’s.
We are working closely with a few outstanding partners to enable growth of professional education and ensure an excellent student experience throughout the participant lifecycle. You will be the operational lead for these third-party collaborations, managing the stakeholders (our external partners, Faculties and central service departments), and leading the operational delivery of the partnerships.
The successful candidate will have outstanding communication and stakeholder management skills. They will be confident at managing complex collaborations, including third-party providers. They will have an excellent understanding of the needs of professional education students, as well as ensuring success in a complex operational structure. This post will sit within the Operations Team, which is tasked with supporting Faculties delivering our full range of educational programmes.
The role is primarily based at King’s Strand Campus though you may be required to travel to other campuses on occasion. As part of King’s trial of hybrid working, all team members can work remotely for part of the week if they wish.
This post will be offered on an indefinite contract.
This is a full-time post.
Key responsibilities
The Programmes & Partnerships Manager will work closely with the Faculties and the wider KO & KPED team to ensure all aspects of the programmes run smoothly for both professional participants and the teaching faculty, bringing their expertise, ideas and suggestions to the team to create a world-class programme.
The Programmes & Partnership Manager will be responsible for all aspects of the set up and day-to-day running of the programmes including:
- ensuring outstanding support and service provision for the entire lifecycle of our professional participants;
- maintaining strong relationships with professional participants and having a good understanding of their needs, experience and feedback – using these insights to proactively make recommendations to improve and enhance their experience;
- establishing strong relationships with Faculties and central services departments, ensuring a smooth professional participant journey from expression of interest to programme completion;
- maintaining all programme information including the online learning environment, programme handbook, relevant manuals/procedures etc, keeping them accurate and up to date;
- acting as the first point of contact for professional participant enquiries and support on the stackable postgraduate awards, resolving, tracking or escalating as necessary, to provide a responsive and outstanding professional participant enquiry service;
- managing the transition periods for professional participants from offer holder to student and from student to graduate, working with other teams as necessary to promote and champion the benefits of long term engagement with King’s;
- ensuring a consistent, accurate and timely service across all operational assessment activity; including exam content/paper production, exam events, coursework/project submission, reconciliation of mark entry and results processing;
- being the main point of contact for all queries regarding the professional education partnerships, acting as a key conduit between King’s and our commercial partners. Working closely with the Head of Portfolio & Learning Design, the Senior Project Manager, and the Operations Manager to coordinate the stages from course design and development to marketing, enrolment and certification;
- identifying any ongoing live issues impacting the collaboration, and resolving / escalating where appropriate;
- monitoring student, academic and partner feedback to proactively manage opportunities to improve student experience, programme delivery, course development, and student recruitment;
- maintaining a close working relationship with the full-time degree education team to ensure consistency and best practice.
The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.
Skills, knowledge, and experience
- Strong communication skills and ability to communicate confidently and efficiently to both internal and external contacts, providing explanation of complex procedures to non-technical audience
- Excellent time management and organisational skills with the ability to work on short-, medium- and long- term projects and conflicting priorities
- Excellent stakeholder management skills with the ability to work across multiple teams and departments to influence and deliver outcomes successfully
- Experience working in a student facing role, ideally in a programme management role
- A proactive nature with an ability to deal with inefficiencies or risks, using initiative to mitigate them and/or to improve operational effectiveness
- Demonstrated analytical skills and ability to collect, process and review data, to summarise findings and shape an action plan
- Motivated and excited by student success and the benefits of professional education
- Inclusive and collaborative approach, with a commitment to and understanding of equality issues within a diverse and multicultural environment
- Experience of working with virtual learning environment (for example KEATS)
- Experience of updating websites, course materials, or similar
- Experience working with CRMs and other databases
- Ability to track financial information accurately
Further information
King’s Online and King’s Professional & Executive Development are part of the new School for Professional and Continuing Education. We are a truly collaborative team. We partner with academics and professional services staff across the university and with our external partners to design, develop and deliver a wide range of educational programmes in line with King's Education Strategy. Together, we develop online master's degrees, short courses, bespoke executive education courses, and increasingly, stackable micro-credentials.
You’ll be joining us at an exciting time as we seek to realise our strategic ambition of being the UK leader in continuing education, specifically in the areas of learning design, development, consultancy, and partnerships.
We are a dynamic team with ambitious growth targets in a priority area of development for King’s. We proudly foster a supportive culture and community which prioritises both individual and collective wellbeing. We actively work to protect and improve the wellbeing of all staff; be it physical, mental or social, and recognise this as central to our work and success.
King’s offers a wide variety of support to employees, including flexible working arrangements, paid maternity leave, menopausal support and much more. All of our staff benefit from a generous pension contribution as well.