Overview of Role
Senior Academic Coaches are responsible for helping their students earn on-time degrees.
It’s not easy work!
Our students care deeply about earning a college degree—for them, for their family, for their future—but on a day-to-day basis it’s hard for them to fit in school.
So it’s the coach’s job to be a student’s 1) “personal trainer” for their education so every day the student is getting more school work done than they otherwise would have, 2) “problem-solver” when they don’t know how to make the time for school, 3) tutor when the student encounters academic work that is difficult for them, 4) annoying accountability partner when they haven’t logged into their school work in a week, and finally and most importantly 5) a true partner who will never give up on them even if they have given up on themselves.
As you can imagine, this work is enormously complex for every student, and it needs to be personalized -- with students currently ranging in age (18-65) and coming with a wide range of academic abilities, and lifestyles. Each student needs a different, often changing, set of supports to ensure they are successful.
Because of the nature of the work, we intentionally hire individuals with significant experience (often having been teachers, managers or program directors elsewhere) but who love direct service work and helping individuals achieve their goals. As such, Senior Coaches have a high level of flexibility and autonomy to utilize their skills and expertise in service to our students.
Senior Academic Coaches operate as part of a larger Duet team that are all committed to students’ success. They lean on fellow coaches when their students are stuck academically in a content area where they themselves need a refresher, or when they need a new idea or language to use with a student that won’t call them back. They work closely with enrollment coaches, career coaches, and student support coaches when their students need a different type of expertise. And Senior Academic Coaches work closely with their manager to constantly review data, identify trends and problems to be solved, and most importantly have another expert coach they can lean on for tough questions and sticky issues.
Detailed Job Responsibilities
The Senior Academic Coach will partner with a team of other coaches to ensure excellent outcomes for the students they are supporting. This work includes but is not limited to:
Working to ensure a caseload of students is making adequate daily and weekly progress towards Associate or Bachelor’s Degree completion
Building strong relationships with each student you work with to support them in their academic progress, hold them accountable to goals, and help them get going when they get off track
Reviewing daily data about the progress of students to determine which students to reach out to, the right next steps for an individual student, and how to support them in completing their goal
Meeting with students virtually (and hopefully in the future in person at our student center or elsewhere) or over the phone to help them identify and take their next academic step
Previewing academic projects and reviewing project feedback with students
Ongoing engagement with financial aid and billing to ensure students can stay ahead, enrolled, and in good standing through graduation
Problem-solving alongside the Duet team and the student to help optimize the time in their life to get the maximum amount of schoolwork accomplished
Please note that at Duet ALL staff are tasked with the job of student success. This means becoming adept at providing support to our students at every stage in their journey. This will often include jumping in to help a student solve a problem that is outside of your job description (ex: helping to navigate the student portal, completing a FAFSA, previewing an academic project, or reviewing a resume). We all share the responsibility for our students’ success and there is no work more important than helping a student remove a barrier and move forward.