Manager of Electronic Communications

About the Department:

The University of Chicago Law School occupies a unique niche among this country's premier law schools. Located on a residential campus in one of America's great cities, UChicago Law offers a rigorous and interdisciplinary professional education that blends the study of law with the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. Students, faculty, and staff form a small, tightly knit community devoted to the life of the mind. Learning is participatory. UChicago Law does not seek to impose a single viewpoint or style of thought on its students. Instead, our faculty exposes students to contrasting views, confident in students' abilities to choose their own paths.

Job Summary:

The Manager of Digital Communications ensures that the Law School’s digital communications (including the website, social media, video, digital signage, and others) serve mission-driven needs for communication, community building, teaching/learning, and marketing. Creates, shares and manages timely, informative, and engaging content that clearly communicates the Law Schools' commitment to excellence in teaching and learning. Under the supervision of the Associate Dean of Communications, the manager works on both technical and content matters to support all facets of the Law School’s mission. Occasional evening and weekend work required.

Responsibilities:

• Recruits, trains, monitors, and mentors decentralized content authors who use the CMS.
• Identifies and resolves technical problems. 
• Encourages innovative web site use. 
• Coordinates and performs daily content updates. 
• Edits audio and video for web and social media. 
• Monitors new and existing pages for grammar, consistency in tone, content, design, and architecture. 
• Maintains currency of site content, deletes/archives obsolete or historical content. 
• Creates original copy and/or multimedia content for website features as required. 
• Ensures that posted content complies with Law School and University policies, including accessibility requirements. 
• Collaborates with the Director of Content on tools and strategies for digital storytelling.
• Monitors and curates content for Law School’s official social media presences, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Goodreads, LinkedIn, Soundcloud, and more.
• Maintains knowledge of social media trends and best practices. 
• Helps train and support other constituents at the Law School in social media best practices. Assists in development and maintenance of all official social media presences of Law School departments. 
• Creates and updates long term strategic plans for digital communications. 
• Coordinates upgrades, design and technical changes to existing website. 
• Conceives, plans and promotes functionality changes and upgrades. 
• Works with outside vendors in the bidding, development and implementation of new designs, functionality and technical upgrade. 
• Works with internal constituents on email templates and best practices. 
• Responsible for digital signage software and development of content templates. 
• Creates and maintains occasional microsites managed outside the CMS. 
• Serves as the School’s primary contact with the University’s Web Services Group.
• Stays current with University web-related developments. 
• Facilitates web presence of school constituent groups such as students organizations and alumni groups. 
• Advises faculty in use of web-based technology such as wikis, blogs, course websites, and podcasts. 
• Assists staff, faculty and students in development and use of other electronic means of communication. 
• Performs code testing on components and works to ensure that appropriate implementation standards are met. Evaluates design alternatives for development cost and solutions using various methods. 
• Supports and maintains existing applications. Works with web developers and responds to requests from users. Works with outside vendor to keep sites up to date, improve function, and maintain accessibility standards. As needed, performs smaller coding projects.
•  Performs other related work as needed.

Minimum Qualifications:

Education:

• Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.

Work Experience:

• Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through 2-5 years of work experience in a related job discipline.

Preferred Qualifications:

Education:

• Bachelors Degree 

Experience:

• A minimum of four years experience in web design and development

Preferred Competencies:

• Knowledge of CSS, HTML, Git, JavaScript, and the Adobe Creative Suite 
• Experience with content management systems and Drupal 8 
• Understanding of server-side and database technologies, especially PHP and MySQL 
• Web development and project management experience in an academic setting 
• Experience working in Windows and Mac environment 
• Experience and skill in graphic design 
• Experience with Section 508, knowledge of digital audio and video editing 
• Strong writing and editorial skills, as well as teaching and training skills strong interpersonal, communication, organizational, and teamwork skills 
• Ability to work effectively in both team situations and independently 
• Self-motivation, positive attitude, and ability and willingness to provide exemplary service to staff, students, and faculty 
• High attention to detail