WGU is looking to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs and needs a Senior Research Scientist to design and execute research projects to support fact-based decision-making.
Requirements
- Advanced knowledge in accessing, retrieving, manipulating, inserting, and deleting data from structured and unstructured databases.
- Highly experienced in selecting and deploying methods and techniques to conduct studies, including A/B testing, quasi-experimental, mixed methods, and others.
- Ability to perform analysis tasks and follows research plans under minimal guidance and supervision.
- Highly proficient and experienced in using tools like Google Scholar and peer-reviewed journals to identify valid and reliable sources of research, using critical thinking, judgment, and reading skills.
- Highly experienced in the creation of surveys, and survey software (e.g., Qualtrics), that elicit clear and relevant inputs from target groups, and in using them to acquire data to draw meaningful conclusions.
- Advanced experience in the selection and deployment of a variety of mathematical models, forecasting methods (e.g., time series, inferential, regression), descriptive statistics, and classification algorithms to make predictions and identify relationships based on limited sets of data.
- Proficient in the MS Office suite, including advanced Excel knowledge.
Responsibilities
- Owns the research plan and executes following systematic and structured approaches that ensure the validity, reliability, and meaningfulness of research findings while remaining open to necessary adjustments and adaptations as circumstances require.
- Drives strategic research contributions and leads large-scale, cross-functional initiatives.
- Identifies adequate data sources and data sets to evaluate hypotheses, build forecasts, and support findings of research projects and experiments.
- Drives the documentation of data and research needs in projects of high complexity with a student and equity-centered lens, collaborating with peers, cross-functional partners, faculty staff, and leaders.
- Influences institutional decision-making by aligning research outcomes with strategic goals.
- Combines data analysis, visualization, and narrative structures to convey information in compelling ways that instigate deliberate action.
- Leads the translation of user stories into technical requirements.
Other
- Bachelor's Degree in a related discipline
- Minimum of 7 years of related experience in Research, Learning Science, Program Evaluation, Statistics, Decision Intelligence, or Behavioral/Cognitive Psychology.
- Experience working with, collecting data from, and researching actual humans.
- Masters or PhD in a related discipline strongly preferred
- Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours)
