If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

 

Who is WGU Academy?

At WGU Academy, we work collaboratively to dramatically impact college and workforce readiness efforts on a large scale. WGU Academy uses a data and research-driven, evidence-based approach to learning, and the organization has a healthy respect and passion for research and analytics. Our primary mission is to develop and deliver new solutions for college and career readiness to tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of individuals.  

This is a fully benefited, remote position that can be located anywhere in the 48 US States.

Why consider us?

• Fully remote position where you’ll make a difference in a mission-driven environment.

• Equipment provided: Choice of Mac or PC laptop

• Comprehensive and affordable benefits (including mental health benefits, and generous PTO) plus 403b matches and contributions where we put money into your retirement account, even if you’re not contributing.

• 75% employee tuition discount available at WGU for yourself, and 50% discount for qualifying family members.

• Innovative, fun, and enriching team environment where are you valued, given credit where it’s due, and recognized for your contributions.

• Collaborative and cross functional team, where good communication is prioritized.

What will you be doing?

As a Research Scientist (with a focus on Behavioral Economics) with WGU Academy, you’ll work on real-world problems and use data to identify different learner attributes and inform the building of interventions to promote attainment.

At WGU Academy, you’ll have the opportunity to leverage technology to identify how the principles of coaching, motivational interviewing, and decision-making can be applied to promote positive and lasting change in learners’ educational journeys. Our learners have different motivations and goals, possess differing levels of prior knowledge, and exhibit different learning and study behaviors. And you’ll serve as the expert in understanding how to maximize their motivation and strengthen their outcomes. In short, your work will directly help us understand, interact with, and serve all our learners better.

You’ll execute the full life cycle of a study, including conceptualization of an idea, review of the literature, primary data collection, accessing our database to obtain the data, data wrangling, performing the most appropriate quantitative and qualitative analysis and reporting the results. You’ll also help identify new markets & customers, and help guide them to educational success.

As a thought leader for research at WGU Academy, you’ll interact with analysts, academic leaders, curriculum design experts, and other researchers across the organization to continuously experiment, theorieze, analyze, and improve learner outcomes.

Who will you be helping?

Findings about learners and their experiences are used immediately and lead to direct, actionable interventions and changes to help current and future learners succeed. Your research will shape marketing, enrollment, and learning experiences for individual learners who have traditionally been underserved in Higher Education.

Who are you?

You’re inquisitive and have the desire to innovate and test ideas in an environment where iteration is encouraged and expected. You enjoy working at a fast pace on projects that have clear-cut deadlines and objectives, and follow a 2-3 week sprint cycle. You love working with data, and are excited about creating and improving learning experiences for our learners. You have a passion for serving learners from a variety of socioeconomic contexts, and are excited to shape their learning trajectory.

How is success measured?

We’ve built out a training plan so you can familiarize yourself with the ongoing research projects at WGU Academy, previous key findings, and all our data. Once you’re up to speed with our research and data, success will be measured against the number of deliverables, the speed of generation, and quality of your findings.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:  

• Plans and executes research projects through design, data collection, analysis, and dissemination. 

• Determines appropriate research methods including implementations studies, qualitative research, secondary data-analysis, quasi-experimental studies, and randomized controlled trials. 

• Collects, combines and cleans data from multiple sources.  

• Analyzes data, using statistical software and techniques.  

• Designs and deploys surveys using software. 

• Produces high-quality, client-facing reports and presentations. 

• Represents WGU Academy by presenting at relevant conferences and publishing in appropriate journals. 

• Designs the Academy evaluation plan and assists with reporting. 

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities  

• Expert ability to independently define and conduct original scientific research.  

• Data manipulation using programming languages like R, SQL and Python. 

• Data visualization skills using tools like Tableau, R, and Python. 

• Deep experience with quantitative and qualitative primary research methods.  

• Proven ability to lead research projects including cost, resource, schedule management, compliance and reporting. 

• Excellent written, oral, presentation, and interpersonal skills.  

• Exceptional ability to communicate research results and key ideas to lay and scholarly audiences. 

• Ability to demonstrate and apply appropriate intellectual curiosity, skepticism, and technical aptitude in the work assigned 

• Ability and drive to continuously learn to improve scientific acumen skills to increase productivity.   

• The ability to be a subject matter expert to provide thought leadership in the field.  

• Thrives by working collaboratively and creatively in a fast-paced environment. 

• Strong attention to detail and exemplifies pride and ownership over the quality of our learning experience. 

• Ability to foster strong relationships within the team and external stakeholders.  

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in behavioral economics, IO psychology, decision theory, positive psychology, cognitive psychology, or a closely related field

• 3+ years of professional/project experience in scientific research (quantitative and qualitative)   

• Experience in data analytics, including using programming languages (R, SQL, Python), and data visualization tools (R, Tableau, Python)  

Preferred Qualifications: 

• Experience in higher education, and/or educational technology research  

• PhD in related field 

Working Conditions  

 Travel up to 10% 

WGU Academy, Inc is an affiliated non-profit entity of 501c(3) Corporation of Western Governors University

As an equal opportunity employer, WGU recognizes that our strength lies in our people. We are committed to diversity.