SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Salary: USD 157,500 - 157,500 / annual
Meritus College is a new not-for-profit online college designed for working adults and career-changers overlooked by traditional higher education. Founded in 2025, it offers asynchronous, competency-based programs with a "workplace as laboratory" approach, combining real-world skill development with personalized coaching.
The Director, Instruction and Learner Experience owns the complete learner-facing academic experience—curriculum, instruction quality, and learner support—reporting directly to the Chief Academic Officer and serving on the core leadership team.
Key Responsibilities:
**Curriculum & Program Design (25%):** Own design, development, review, and revision of all academic programs, including learning outcomes, course maps, assessment design, and materials. Direct the program design team roadmap and approve programs before launch. Ensure alignment to labor market outcomes, accreditation standards, and the College's educational philosophy.
**Instruction & Teaching Quality (25%):** Define teaching excellence standards at Meritus and hold the instructional team accountable through course observations, instructional review, and performance management. Develop and evaluate instructional staff, maintain faculty credential files for accreditation, and manage instructor workload and staffing against enrollment projections.
**Learner Support & Services (25%):** Own the full learner support function including academic advising, coaching, tutoring, accessibility services, library resources, and persistence outreach. Establish caseload standards and response-time expectations. Ensure distance learners have genuinely equivalent access. Handle first-level resolution of learner complaints, grade appeals, and academic progress disputes.
**Assessment, Policy & Accreditation Readiness (10%):** Design and run the assessment system including course and program-level outcome assessment and annual program review cycles. Own key academic metrics (persistence, completion, competency attainment, time to completion, satisfactory academic progress, learner satisfaction). Draft and maintain academic policies. Author academic sections of accreditation self-study.
**Team Leadership & Strategic Partnership (15%):** Lead, manage, and grow instruction, program design, and learner services teams. Build systems and processes to absorb enrollment growth without proportional headcount increases. Serve as thought partner to the Chief Academic Officer on new programs, modalities, and support models. Champion the college internally and externally.
This role requires someone who moves fluidly between designing systems and doing hands-on work, responding to unfinished systems by building rather than waiting for direction.
**Requirements:**
**Must Haves:**
- Bachelor's degree required; Master's degree in higher education administration, public policy, or related field strongly preferred
- 8+ years in higher education with direct experience building or leading academic programs (not only administering). Experience with competency-based, online, or workforce-aligned models serving working adults strongly preferred
- Experience building in a start-up environment, including new program launch or fast-scaling organization, with a track record of creating structure, systems, and process from scratch
- Experience managing mid-to-senior level employees, including regular professional development and performance reviews
- Experience working with student services staff, with background in academic support services and advising
- Strong assessment and data background, comfortable owning learning outcome assessment and translating academic metrics into decisions and curricular change
- High capacity and resourcefulness, comfortable moving between designing the model and doing hands-on work
- AI fluency and sound technology judgment, able to evaluate where AI and emerging tools can strengthen curriculum, assessment, and instruction, with judgment to know where they should not be used
- Sound judgment and executive presence, able to serve as credible thought partner to senior leaders and dissent when evidence supports it
- Committed to the mission of creating pathways to family-sustaining careers and breaking the poverty cycle
- Excited to build in a start-up environment, comfortable with ambiguity
- Committed to serving students from all backgrounds and meeting each learner where they are
- Passionate about fostering inclusive workplace culture and continuous learning in advancing inclusive excellence
**Nice to Haves:**
- Fluent in accreditation, able to write to standard without templates. Familiarity with regional or national accreditors and experience preparing self-study documentation expected
- Experience managing both instructional staff and student services staff, understanding that both functions succeed or fail together in accredited settings
