Researcher – Educator Workforce Development and Program Evaluation

Position Description

Researcher – Educator Workforce Development and Program Evaluation The UAF Office of K-12 Outreach is seeking an early-career researcher with strong program-evaluation experience to help develop and lead a statewide research agenda focused on Grow Your Own educator workforce development. K-12 Outreach manages statewide initiatives including the Alaska Statewide Mentor Project and RISE Alaska, which includes the state's Educators Rising program. Because the office works across programs, institutions, school districts, communities, and statewide partners, it occupies a boundary-spanning role within Alaska's education system. This position will expand K-12 Outreach's capacity to understand how these efforts interact and how they collectively contribute to long-term educator workforce development. The researcher will lead development of an office-wide evaluation framework while building a research agenda examining Grow Your Own workforce strategies through network weaving, mixed-methods research, community-based research practices, and complex systems approaches. You will be comfortable moving between research, evaluation, partnership development, and practical program improvement. You should enjoy working collaboratively with program staff, university researchers, school districts, state agencies, and community partners to identify meaningful research questions and develop useful evidence. The successful candidate will have experience with program evaluation and both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Experience with surveys, interviews, focus groups, data management, and research design will be important. Familiarity with network analysis, complex systems theory, community-based research, or educator workforce development will be particularly valuable. You should also be able to translate complex findings into clear reports, presentations, visualizations, and recommendations that are useful to both researchers and practitioners. Master's degree in education, educational research, program evaluation, social science, public policy, organizational studies, or a related field. Minimum of 4 years of experience in educational program evaluation, including experience coordinating evaluation activities across multiple programs or initiatives.