Senior Specialist, Experiential Learning Innovation

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Posting Reason:

New Position

Job Type:

Employee

Anticipated Duration in Months (for contracts and temporary assignments):

N/A

Job Family:

Academic Delivery Support

# of Open Positions:

1

Faculty/Service - Department:

Student Affairs, CDEL Community Engagement and Employability Partnerships

Campus:

Main Campus

Union Affiliation:

SSUO

Date Posted (YYYY/MM/DD):

2026/10/01

Applications must be received BEFORE (YYYY/MM/DD):

2026/10/12

Hours per week:

35

Salary Grade:

SSUO Grade 11

Salary Range:

$95,594.00 - $120,750.00
About Student Affairs:

Student Affairs is at the very heart of the student experience at the University of Ottawa. We recruit the very best future students, support them throughout their university years and leave them well-prepared for fulfilling careers and future studies. Our team of more than 600 dedicated staff provides the services that keep students happy, well and thriving as they pursue their ambitions. We help them apply and enrol for courses, we oversee 11 residences and an award-winning Dining Hall, we organize fun events, we provide extensive recreation program opportunities and varsity sports activities, we run an innovative career development and experiential learning program and much more!

 There’s nothing more rewarding than helping future generations reach their full potential at a world-class university. With our wide variety of career opportunities and professional development pathways, we’re sure that you’ll enjoy the experience as much as our students do.

Position purpose:

The incumbent serves as the methodological backbone of the University of Ottawa’s interdisciplinary and challenge- based learning programming. Bringing expertise in systems thinking, design thinking and human-centered design, the role supports faculties and programs in integrating highly participatory, student-centered processes. The incumbent maintains an institution-wide perspective, ensuring the coherence and visibility of the experiential learning offering and its alignment with related university initiatives. Finally, the incumbent also stewards an internal funding mechanism enabling faculty to pilot experiential learning innovation with internal collaborators and external partners.

In this role, your responsibilities will include:

1. Coordinate and deliver experiential learning programming

• Coordinate and actively support the delivery of 6–8 interdisciplinary challenges and 3–5 additional innovative experiential courses each year across faculties.

• Ensure quality, consistency and pedagogical coherence across the portfolio, aligning challenges and courses with related institutional initiatives — notably the In-depth Experiential Learning Stream (IELS) — to support a coherent university-wide experiential learning ecosystem.

• Document the function’s methodological knowledge by producing progress reports, positioning documents and reference tools that support institutional visibility, continuity and knowledge transfer.

• Beyond design and facilitation, provide hands-on support to bring initiatives to life — assisting with promotion, student registration, scheduling and day-to-day logistics — based on faculty needs and the incumbent’s available capacity.

2. Provide methodological expertise and faculty support

• Bring systems thinking, design thinking, human-centred design and related participatory methodologies to the design of learning experiences in an academic context.

• Support and advise faculties and programs in integrating participatory, student-centred processes into their courses, especially where they have limited experience with such approaches — respecting that pedagogical decisions remain with faculty.

• Act as a trusted resource for faculties, developing a nuanced understanding of each one’s realities, constraints and disciplinary cultures, and exercising tact and judgment to adapt support to each professor’s context.

• Facilitate workshops, communities of practice and one-on-one consultations to build faculty capacity in these methodologies.

3. Design, facilitate and evaluate participatory activities

• Co-design and facilitate participatory activities embedded in academic courses (challenges, sprints, labs, etc.).

• Adapt participatory activities and learning experiences to support diverse participants, contexts, and learning goals.

• Develop evaluation and reflection frameworks; collect and analyze outcomes data to inform continuous improvement.

4. Develop and leverage partnerships

• Identify and find ways to engage partners across the private, public and community sectors to source authentic challenges by collaborating with colleagues from various faculties and University services.

• Contribute to aligning partner challenges with academic learning outcomes, ensuring reciprocity and pedagogical integrity.

5. Manage an internal funding mechanism

• Administer the internal fund supporting faculty members to implement experiential learning innovation with internal collaborators and external partners: design/update guidelines, manage calls for proposals, track spending and report on outcomes.

• Advise on and support funded faculty projects through implementation,

What you will bring:

• (Education) Master’s degree in education, design, social sciences, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• (Years of experience) A minimum of five years of experience in designing and facilitating participatory or co-creation processes and activities (e.g., systems thinking or mapping, design thinking, human-centered design), including experience coordinating programs or a portfolio of projects.
• Active bilingualism (speaking, reading and writing in English and French) is required
• Excellent interpersonal skills and adaptability, with a demonstrated ability to build trusting relationships with people of varied disciplines, profiles and needs.

• Experience advising or building capacity among educators or professionals.

• Experience with program evaluation and outcomes assessment.

• Flexibility, proactiveness and a solutions-oriented mindset.
• Considered assets: experience administering grant or internal funding programs; experience in a post-secondary setting.

Key Competencies at uOttawa:
Here are the required competencies for all or our employees at uOttawa: 

Planning: Organize in time a series of actions or events in order to realize an objective or a project. Plan and organize own work and priorities in regular daily activities.
Initiative: Demonstrate creativity and initiative to suggest improvements and encourage positive results. Is proactive and self-starting. Show availability and willingness to go above and beyond whenever it is possible.
Client Service Orientation: Help or serve others to meet their needs. This implies anticipating and identifying the needs of internal and external clients and finding solutions on how to meet them.
Teamwork and Cooperation: Cooperate and work well with other members of the team to reach common goal(s). Accept and give constructive feedback. Able to adjust own behaviour to reach the goals of the team.

The University of Ottawa embraces diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We are passionate about our people and committed to employment equity. We foster a culture of respect, teamwork and inclusion, where collaboration, innovation, and creativity fuel our quest for research and teaching excellence. While all qualified persons are invited to apply, we welcome applications from qualified Indigenous persons, racialized persons, persons with disabilities, women and LGBTQIA2S+ persons. The University is committed to creating and maintaining an accessible, barrier-free work environment. The University is also committed to working with applicants with disabilities requesting accommodation during the recruitment, assessment and selection processes. Applicants with disabilities may contact [email protected] to communicate the accommodation need. All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority.

Note: if this is a union position: The hiring process will be governed by the current collective agreement related to the union affiliation noted above; you can click here to find out more.

If this is a front-line position with responsibilities to interact with students, selected candidates must be rated at the Low Advanced proficiency level or higher for both oral comprehension and reading comprehension in their second official language. The rating is determined by a proficiency test designed by the Official Languages and Bilingualism Institute.

Prior to May 1, 2022, the University required all students, faculty, staff, and visitors (including contractors) to be fully vaccinated against Covid-19 as defined in Policy 129 – Covid-19 Vaccination. This policy was suspended effective May 1, 2022 but may be reinstated at any point in the future depending on public health guidelines and the recommendations of experts.