Field Scholar, Youth-Nex & Crpes

Youth-Nex (UVA Center to Promote Effective Youth Development) and CRPES (Center for and Public Education in the South) in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Virginia are seeking to hire a Field Scholar who will advance scholarship and community impact around contemporary issues of race, youth development, and public education. The Field Scholar will be a Research Scientist (UVA Professional Research Staff) who supports research projects across the centers.

One primary role of the Field Scholar will be to support the building of research infrastructure for the Charlottesville Freedom School, with a focus on its middle school aged students (grades 5-8). The Field Scholar, in collaboration with Youth-Nex faculty, will build a program of research on youth experiences and outcomes from the Charlottesville Freedom School. This will include exploring how participation in the Freedom School, as an out-of-school (summer) intervention that provides safe and supportive summertime programming for students, boosts literacy and improves youth engagement in school and other social emotional competencies for students from groups that have been historically marginalized within Charlottesville’s educational systems. This will include working with data from the past two years of Freedom Schools as well as planning for research on the next Freedom School implementation, set to take place in either summer 2024 or 2025. Depending on interest, the Field Scholar might also partner with faculty from CRPES and Youth-Nex to build a line of research on the Educating for Democracy curriculum and resources. Educating for Democracy was developed by CRPES in collaboration with Youth-Nex. The Field Scholar could support research including examination of whether and how participation in the curriculum supports students’ development of Transformative Social Emotional Learning (TSEL) and key critical thinking and civic engagement skills.

The second primary role of the Field Scholar will be to contribute to the successful implementation of the CARES360 project, a project funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. The purpose of this project is to extend, refine, and validate a measurement system to assess culturally sustaining, anti-racist, and equity supportive (CARES) practices in the classroom, leveraging a model that was previously developed with the same acronym to highlight its five relevant domains: Connections to curriculum, Authentic relationships, Reflective thinking, Effective communication, and Sensitivity to student culture. The CARES classroom assessment system includes teacher-report, student-report, and observer-report measures and is designed to support teachers in elementary and middle schools to improve their CARES instruction and discipline. This project addresses important and timely issues related to culturally-responsive practices and equity in education; it also addresses considerable gaps related to the lack of valid, reliable, and efficient methods for assessing CARES, which can help reduce a range of inequitable experiences impacting Black, Indigenous, and other students of color. The Field Scholar’s role in this project will be to support implementation of the project, which may include research activities related to obtaining, modifying, and continuing institutional review board approval (IRB), further developing and refining survey measures, communicating with local district and school partners, and supporting data collection including classroom observational and online survey data. In addition, the Field Scholar will have dedicated time to lead and co-author papers for submission to peer-reviewed journals utilizing data collected from the CARES360 project. In addition to the above job responsibilities, other duties may be assigned.

The ideal candidate will be a highly-motivated, efficient, individual with a history of excellent work ethic, attention to detail, high levels of organization, ability to juggle multiple deadlines, and work both independently and collaboratively. In addition, the candidate will find motivation in our shared mission at Youth-Nex and CRPES.

Qualifications:

• Ability to conceptualize and clearly communicate rationale for research, and the technical capacity to run analyses.
• Planning skills to coordinate timing of projects and data collection.
• An earned Ph.D. in a research-oriented Education, Psychology, Human Development, Public Health, or a related, research-focused field is required by the start date of the position.
• Collaborative experiences pursuing external funding opportunities.
• Ability to review and synthesize relevant literature.
• Data analysis and scientific writing skills
• Prior experience conducting analyses for, writing, and submitting peer-reviewed journal articles as a first author.
• Experience: 1-3 years of post-doctorate experience
• Experience supervising junior project staff.

Knowledge/Skills/Abilities:

• Content expertise in some of the following areas: Teacher professional development and coaching in K-12 school settings focused on culturally responsive or sustaining practices, teacher psychological wellbeing and efficacy, school-based intervention to improve school climate.
• Administrative expertise: Proficient with Dropbox, Box, Google Suite, Microsoft Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams), Zoom, Qualtrics or similar survey data collection tools, online software for delivering engaging content such as Nearpod or similar, and ability to learn new software quickly and introduce new useful applications and platforms to the team.
• Methods expertise in some of the following areas: Research-practice partnerships and conducting applied research in school settings; qualitative data analysis.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Expertise in mixed methods and qualitative methods is preferred.
• Experience working with and/or pursuing research about students who have been historically marginalized in educational settings is preferred.

$70,000-$85,000 commensurate with experience and technical expertise, plus generous UVA benefits.

To Apply:

Please apply through Workday by searching for "Field Scholar, Youth-Nex & CRPES" and complete an application online. Include the following documents:

• Two publications
• A CV/resume
• Contact Information for 3 references, including name, email and phone number for each
• A cover letter with a statement of research interests

All documents can be loaded into the resume submission field, multiple documents can be submitted into this one field. Internal applicants must apply through their UVA Workday profile. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

This is a restricted position and continuation is dependent upon the availability of funding and satisfactory performance.

Before a formal offer of employment is extended, the selected candidate will undergo a background check per university policy.

For questions about the position, please contact Youth-Nex. For questions about and assistance with the application process, please contact Margaret Weeks, Academic Recruiter.

This is primarily a sedentary job involving extensive use of desktop computers. The job does occasionally require traveling some distance to attend meetings, and programs.

The University of Virginia, including the UVA Health System which represents the UVA Medical Center, Schools of Medicine and Nursing, UVA Physician’s Group and the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library, are fundamentally committed to the diversity of our faculty and staff. We believe diversity is excellence expressing itself through every person's perspectives and lived experiences. We are equal opportunity and affirmative action employers. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, color, disability, gender identity or expression, marital status, national or ethnic origin, political affiliation, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, veteran status, and family medical or genetic information.