Who We Are
Founded in 1989, the American Indian College Fund (College Fund) is a national organization that invests in Native students and tribal colleges and universities (TCUs) so we can transform lives and communities. We provide scholarships to Native students for college and holistic support to help them succeed once there. The College Fund also helps tribal colleges increase their capacity so they can best support their students’ success and their communities. We partner with TCUs on their academic programs, business operations, community engagement, Native arts, faculty development, and more. The College Fund prioritizes its team members’ professional growth and well-being and has received the Denver Post’s Top Place to Work award for several years, including in 2026.
The Team
You’ll join two people on the Faculty Development team: the Sr. Program Officer—Faculty Development and Faculty Development Program Coordinator. Our team’s mission is to help tribal college faculty thrive and to excel in their roles as educators, scholars, and leaders. We offer a variety of programs and resources for faculty, including an annual conference, writing retreats, graduate school fellowships, and professional development workshops. We are committed to the College Fund’s guiding principles of respect, relationship, reciprocity, and responsibility.
Who You Are
The College Fund is looking for a creative and relationship-oriented Program Officer—Faculty Development to help expand our programming and implement our faculty success strategy. We are looking for someone who believes higher education can transform Native communities and understands the multifaceted role played by faculty. The successful applicant is comfortable providing technical assistance, support, and coaching to full-time and adjunct faculty members.
The individual must continually seek to understand faculty needs and develop programming to meet those needs. The position requires excellent program and time management skills due to the large number of institutions we serve, the breadth of programming we offer, and the number of funders who support our work.
This position requires a high level of interpersonal contact with a variety of stakeholders. The Program Officer will cultivate relationships with more than 1,600 faculty across 35 institutions, College Fund staff, TCU administrators and staff, and foundation officials and donors.
This position reports to the Sr. Program Officer - Faculty Development and is expected to travel 3-4 times per year. This position can be based in our Denver, Colorado office or remote from select states.
What You’ll Do
Develop and Oversee Programs
- Manage the faculty professional development (PD) grant program across 34 TCUs
- Create and facilitate 1-3 faculty communities of practice
- Help develop and implement courses and workshops for faculty
- Identify faculty who need PD support and connect them with mentors and other resources
- Be knowledgeable about the unique professional development needs of TCU faculty and propose programs and activities to meet those needs
Advance Faculty Scholarship
- Plan and host virtual writing retreats each semester
- Create and oversee a writing and publishing mentorship program
- Help design the faculty conference agenda and provide support on planning and logistics
- Co-administer the fellowship program with the program coordinator
- Identify or create additional opportunities for faculty to share their research and knowledge
Evaluate Programming and Share our Impact
- Gather and analyze data and information on our programs, projects, and activities to understand our impact
- Help write grant proposals and progress reports to ensure continued funding
- Document and communicate program achievements and challenges internally and with funders
Contribute to General Administration and Team Operations
- Continuously seek to understand faculty members’ needs through surveys, program evaluations, small group discussions, and conversations
- Write reports, briefs, web copy, press releases, blogs, and more
- Maintain highly accurate and up-to-date records, files, and tracking spreadsheets
- Contribute content for faculty newsletter and support its dissemination
- Serve as point person to ensure faculty web pages are up to date
- Travel to tribal colleges and present at conferences to meet faculty and to disseminate our work
- Help monitor budgets and grant deliverables to ensure each program’s objectives are met
- Work with public education team to highlight faculty achievements and faculty development programming
- Maintain strong relationships with co-workers, external stakeholders, funders, and other organizations involved in faculty development programming
Note: This position description is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all duties. The Program Officer—Faculty Development may be assigned additional duties related to the role as needed to advance the College Fund’s mission.
What You Bring:
- Bachelor’s degree
- At least five years of professional work experience
- At least two years of experience working in a higher education setting as a faculty member, adjunct instructor, or staff member, or in a role collaborating with faculty.
- Demonstrated ability to design, plan, and implement programs and activities that support faculty (or other professionals) and meet strategic goals
- Strong program and time management skills to manage multiple projects and deadlines
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
It’s a bonus if you also have:
- Master’s degree
- Personal and/or professional lived experience in American Indian/Alaska Native communities and/or with tribal colleges
- Experience managing grant budgets, timelines, and deliverables
- Understanding of program evaluation to demonstrate program impact and outcomes
- Experience writing for a professional or academic audience
Hiring Process
Review of application and writing sample
Phone call with People Operations (HR) team member
Interview #1 with Director of Faculty Development
Interview #2 with a panel
Background check + Offer Letter
Writing / Project Sample Submission Requirements
To help us evaluate your alignment with this role, please submit a 1-2-page writing or project sample in the COVER LETTER section that demonstrates your ability to synthesize complex information, think strategically, and communicate clearly to a professional audience. An excerpt from an existing piece of work is perfectly acceptable.
What We Are Looking For: Because this role requires writing for a variety of audiences and purposes, —including grant reports for funders, curriculum for new faculty workshops and courses, content for the public-facing web, marketing emails to engage faculty in our programming—your sample should ideally showcase your skills in at least one of these areas. Highly relevant examples include:
- Excerpt from a grant proposal, grant progress report, or program evaluation summary.
- Excerpt from a program brief, executive summary, or justification for a course/workshop/program.
- 1-2 pages from an academic paper.
- 1-2 page newsletter article, blog post, or strategic web copy written for a specific community or constituent group.
Submission Guidelines:
- Length: 1-2 pages (if submitting an excerpt from a larger document, please select the strongest page(s)).
- Format: We do not expect you to write a new document, nor does it need to be professionally designed or formatted. A plain-text PDF or Word document is ideal.
- Authorship: You must be the sole author of the submitted text. If the original project was collaborative, please only submit a section that you personally drafted entirely.
- Confidentiality: Please redact any sensitive, proprietary, or identifying information before submitting.
