Salary Range: Salary commensurate with experience and qualifications
About the Department: Student Academic Engagement and Success (SAES) is a multi-unit division within SMU's Office of the Provost focused on helping undergraduates persist, thrive, and graduate. It spans Honors and Scholars, Experiential Learning, Career Services and Professional Development, Student Advising and Academic Success, General Education and Pre-Major Academic Records, and University Foundations, supported by central teams for budget, data and systems, and operations.
Working with partners across the University, it leads a shared retention and graduation strategy and is mission-driven, collaborative, and data-informed. Its work reaches across schools, faculty and staff, and academic and student-facing offices, and it measures success by what happens for students: persistence, progress, and graduation. Each effort depends on coordination among leaders and teams who do not share a reporting line, and on shared priorities, clear ownership, and reliable follow-through.
About the Position: This role is an on-campus, in-person position.
The Chief of Staff serves as a senior strategic and operational partner to the Associate Provost for Student Academic Engagement and Success (SAES). The position is responsible for ensuring that the priorities of the Associate Provost are translated into coordinated strategy, effective operations, clear accountability, and measurable results across the division.
Working closely with the Associate Provost, the Chief of Staff provides leadership for the day-to-day operations of the Office of the Associate Provost, helps develop and advance student academic success strategy, coordinates cross-functional initiatives, and ensures effective communication and execution across the division.
The Chief of Staff directly supervises key administrative and operational functions within the office, including staff responsible for data and systems management and budget and financial management. The Chief of Staff ensures that financial, operational, and data resources are aligned with divisional priorities and that the Associate Provost has the information necessary to make timely and informed decisions.
The Chief of Staff also represents the Associate Provost in designated working meetings, committees, and project teams, providing continuity in decision-making and ensuring appropriate follow-through. The position works in close partnership with the Senior Executive Assistant, with the Chief of Staff focused primarily on strategy, operations, execution, and organizational coordination, while the Senior Executive Assistant focuses primarily on executive time, scheduling, meeting preparation, correspondence, and administrative support.
Essential Functions: - Strategic Partnership and Execution
- Serve as a strategic thought partner to the Associate Provost in identifying, developing, and advancing priorities related to student academic engagement, persistence, retention, and success.
- Help translate the Associate Provost's vision and priorities into actionable goals, initiatives, timelines, and measures of success.
- Support the development and implementation of the division's student academic success strategy, working across departments to identify opportunities, barriers, and priorities.
Facilitate planning processes that establish clear objectives, ownership, milestones, and measures of progress. - Monitor progress against strategic priorities and proactively identify initiatives that are off track, require additional resources, or need leadership intervention.
- Synthesize complex information and competing perspectives to help the Associate Provost evaluate issues and make informed decisions.
- Ensure decisions made by the Associate Provost and leadership team are translated into clear actions, assigned ownership, and appropriate follow-through.
- Office Operations and Organizational Effectiveness
- Provide operational oversight for the Office of the Associate Provost and establish systems that enable the office to function efficiently, consistently, and proactively.
- Develop and maintain effective operating processes for decision-making, information sharing, project management, budgeting, data reporting, meeting management, and cross-functional coordination.
- Work in close partnership with the Senior Executive Assistant to ensure the Associate Provost's time and attention are aligned with strategic priorities.
- Provide guidance regarding the relative priority of meetings, initiatives, and requests when strategic or organizational context is required.
- Coordinate with the Senior Executive Assistant regarding upcoming meetings requiring strategic preparation, briefing materials, decisions, or follow-up.
- Maintain clear role differentiation: the Senior Executive Assistant owns the effective management of the Associate Provost's calendar, meeting logistics, correspondence, and executive administrative workflow; the
- Chief of Staff owns strategic coordination, organizational execution, office operations, and cross-functional accountability.
- Identify operational inefficiencies, gaps, or duplication of work and recommend improvements to organizational structures and processes.
- Coordinate major office initiatives and ensure projects involving multiple staff members or departments have clear objectives, owners, timelines, and deliverables.
- Create mechanisms for tracking commitments, priorities, decisions, and deliverables across the office.
- Maintain an enterprise-level perspective on the work of the division and help connect individual projects and operational decisions to broader SAES and university priorities.
- Staff Leadership and Management
- Provide direct supervision, coaching, and performance management for designated office staff (Administrative Specialist, Coordinator, Department Business Systems Analyst and Manager of Operations).
- Establish clear performance expectations, priorities, and accountability for direct reports.
- Ensure calendars, data, systems, and financial functions are integrated into strategic planning rather than operating solely as transactional support functions.
- Develop staff capabilities and create structures that encourage ownership, collaboration, responsiveness, and continuous improvement.
- Coordinate workload and priorities across office staff to ensure resources are appropriately aligned with the Associate Provost's highest priorities.
- Ensure the Associate Provost has timely, accurate, and decision-relevant financial information.
- Review budget performance, forecasts, significant expenditures, and resource allocation with appropriate staff and identify emerging issues for the Associate Provost.
- Support strategic resource allocation by connecting budget decisions to divisional goals and priorities.
- Partner with data and systems staff to improve reporting processes, dashboards, systems, and data governance.
- Help translate data into organizational questions and strategic decisions, ensuring that reporting informs action rather than functioning solely as a compliance or reporting activity.
- Representation of the Associate Provost
- Represent the Associate Provost in designated working groups, implementation teams, committees, and internal meetings.
- Participate with sufficient knowledge of the Associate Provost's priorities and perspective to provide direction, resolve routine issues, and maintain momentum when the Associate Provost's direct participation is not necessary.
- Clearly distinguish between matters the Chief of Staff is authorized to resolve and those requiring consultation or decision by the Associate Provost.
- Communicate relevant decisions, concerns, emerging issues, and action items to the Associate Provost.
- Ensure appropriate follow-through after meetings and maintain continuity between the Associate Provost and teams carrying out the work.
- This responsibility is intended to extend the Associate Provost's leadership capacity while allowing the Associate Provost to focus personal attention on decisions, relationships, and initiatives requiring executive-level involvement.
- Leadership Team Coordination
- Support the effectiveness of the SAES leadership team by helping establish clear operating rhythms, decision-making processes, and accountability structures.
- Partner with the Associate Provost to develop leadership meeting agendas around decisions, priorities, risks, and strategic issues rather than routine information sharing.
- Ensure significant initiatives have clearly identified decision-makers, responsible parties, timelines, and expected outcomes.
- Track major leadership commitments and facilitate follow-through across functional areas.
- Identify issues that cross organizational boundaries and convene the appropriate stakeholders to resolve them.
- Promote communication and coordination across SAES units and reduce organizational silos.
- Occasional weekend and evening work may be required to support departmental and organizational needs, priorities and/or programs.
Education and Experience: Required Qualifications: - Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university.
- Seven (7) years of professional experience with progressive responsibility in higher education administration, organizational operations, strategic initiatives, program management, marketing and communications, executive leadership support, or related field.
- Demonstrated experience leading complex projects or initiatives involving multiple stakeholders.
- Three (3) years of experience supervising professional staff or providing significant functional leadership across teams.
- Experience working with budgets, financial information, data, or organizational performance measures.
Preferred Qualifications: - Master's degree in higher education administration, business administration, public administration, organizational leadership, marketing, communications, education, or a related field.
- Experience working in higher education and familiarity with university organizational structures and shared governance.
- Experience supporting a dean, provost, vice president, president, or comparable senior executive.
- Experience with student success, academic affairs, enrollment, advising, student engagement, retention, or related areas.
- Experience using institutional data to inform strategy and organizational decision-making.
- Experience managing or providing leadership oversight for budgets and financial planning.
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities: Strategic Thinking: Connects daily decisions and initiatives to broader institutional goals and helps leadership maintain focus on long-term priorities.
Operational Leadership: Creates systems, structures, and accountability that allow complex organizations to execute effectively. Exhibits strong organizational and project management capabilities.
Executive Judgment: Understands which matters require the Associate Provost's attention, which can be delegated, and which the Chief of Staff can independently advance.
Systems Thinking: Recognizes relationships among people, processes, data, financial resources, organizational structures, and student outcomes.
Decision Facilitation: Ensures leaders have the appropriate information, perspectives, and options necessary to make timely decisions.
Data-Informed Leadership: Uses data to identify organizational questions, evaluate progress, and inform strategic and operational decisions.
Financial Acumen: Understands budget implications and connects resource allocation to strategic priorities.
Influence Without Authority: Effectively coordinates work across departments and organizational levels, including individuals who do not report directly to the position. Demonstrates the ability to translate organizational priorities into actionable plans and measurable outcomes.
Communication: Synthesizes complex information and communicates it clearly and appropriately to senior leaders and diverse stakeholders. Exhibits Strong written, verbal, and executive communication skills and developing communication campaigns to affect change or outcomes.
Accountability and Follow-Through: Creates clarity around decisions, ownership, deadlines, and expected outcomes and ensures commitments move toward completion.
Discretion: Exercises
