Community-Engaged Research and Partnerships Specialist

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Job End Date

Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the Posting End Date.

This position is subject to the satisfactory completion of required background checks.

At UBC, we believe that attracting and sustaining a diverse workforce is key to the successful pursuit of excellence in research, innovation, and learning for all faculty, staff and students. Our commitment to employment equity helps achieve inclusion and fairness, brings rich diversity to UBC as a workplace, and creates the necessary conditions for a rewarding career. 

Job Summary
The Community-Engaged Research and Partnerships Specialist is responsible for implementing the Centre for Migration Studies’ research, partnership, and training priorities, including advancing community-campus research activities, supporting grant applications; developing and delivering training opportunities, and facilitating community-engaged research initiatives.

The role identifies, coordinates and implements collaborative research activities; identifies collaborative funding opportunities and helps develop grant proposals; advises and supports the operational implementation of community-engaged research methodologies; creates and implements training activities around ethical community-engagement practices; contributes to dissemination and knowledge mobilization activities; and serves as a primary point of contact connecting community partners with CMS faculty and students. The incumbent works collaboratively with community organizations in the immigrant-serving sector, Indigenous partners, CMS staff, and interdisciplinary research teams to advance research, training and related partnerships aligned with principles of relational accountability, equity, and mutual benefit. The role supports CMS as a mature research centre by facilitating the implementation of community-engaged research, grant development, training initiatives, and partnership activities.
Organizational Status
This position reports to the CMS Senior Manager and works closely with the CMS Co-Directors and Faculty Community Liaison. This position requires collaboration with a wide range of partners and collaborators, including faculty principal investigators, community partners, trainees, and staff across UBC and partner institutions. The incumbent represents the Centre in community and research partnership settings, acting as a point of coordination across multi-sector projects and supporting activities to advance strategic priorities established by CMS leadership.
Work Performed
Community-engaged Research Practices and Activities

• Serves as an initial point of contact for community organizations seeking research collaboration with CMS and helps identify appropriate faculty, student, or institutional partners and provides guidance on how to navigate UBC structures, processes, and research opportunities.
• Helps faculty and students understand and navigate community-sector relationships, including identifying and making connections between UBC researchers and people or groups with relevant community expertise.
• Works with PIs and community members to create research and engagement protocols that advance ethical, equitable, reciprocal and mutually beneficial collaborations, participatory research approaches, and knowledge mobilization activities meaningful to all involved.
• Works with university-community teams at multiple touchpoints to help clarify expectations, roles, timelines, resources, and reciprocal benefits.
• Depending on Centre priorities and funding, may contribute to or help oversee data collection and/or analysis in community-engaged research under the direction of Principal Investigators, as well as prepare community reports, research products, and collaborative knowledge dissemination.

Funding Development & Training Activities

• Produces and maintains resources to support mutually beneficial, effective university-community partnerships, including information on funding opportunities, partnership development, research practices, and knowledge mobilization.
• Monitors emerging research interests and opportunities identified by community partners and connects regularly with CMS researchers to identify potential collaborations aligned with CMS priorities.
• Actively scans for new funding opportunities to support community engagement.
• Supports the development of grant proposals, partnership agreements and memoranda of understanding by providing, as appropriate, advice, writing support, templates or referrals. Grant opportunities span academic sources (e.g., SSHRC), campus opportunities (e.g., UBC’s Community-University Engagement Support Fund or Indigenous Strategic Initiatives fund), foundation grants, and private giving.
• Develops and delivers training opportunities for CMS faculty, students, trainees, community partners, and other affiliates on university-community engagement, community-based research, equitable and non-exploitative community-engaged research, and knowledge mobilization, including activities associated with the Graduate Certificate in Migration Studies.
• Identifies, develops and pilots training opportunities related to migration and/or responsible research for community members, working with immigrant-serving organizations, grassroots groups, and other partners.

Partnership Stewardship & Community Relations

• Leads engagement with the CMS Community Advisory Board, including agenda development, member communication, meeting facilitation, follow-up, honoraria, and the integration of CAB advice into CMS programs, research initiatives, partnership activities, and training opportunities, working in collaboration with the Senior Manager, Co-Directors, faculty Community Liaison, and community representative on the CMS’s Executive Committee.

• Plans and facilitates other community advisory meetings, gatherings, learning exchanges, and relationship-building processes, working to ensure that public-facing events reflect community priorities and create meaningful opportunities for community participation and exchange.
• Works with CMS staff, co-directors and community partners to develop and implement CMS engagement events and community-oriented or community-engaged programming, including the CMS-Sector Research Collaborations Day, by identifying themes, inviting speakers, developing workshops, delivering programming, coordinating logistics, overseeing implementation, and assessing outcomes.
• Participates in UBC, immigrant service sector, and Indigenous engagement networks, as appropriate. Represents CMS and UBC at relevant networks and bodies, including the UBC Community Engagement Network. This includes participating in off-campus convenings in metro Vancouver and, on occasion, national conferences.

• Develops and nurtures collaborative relationships with immigrant and refugee settlement sector organizations, Indigenous communities, and other community organizations through ongoing communication to support relationship continuity, identify opportunities and resolve tensions; tracks, synthesizes, and shares feedback and ideas from community with CMS colleagues.
• Identifies opportunities and supports the dissemination and knowledge mobilization  of community-engaged research, training activities, and partnership initiatives within CMS and across relevant UBC and community networks.
• Provides community partner feedback and implementation experience to inform CMS planning, evaluation, and continuous improvement activities..

Supervision & Team Support

• Working with the senior manager, oversees work planning, delegation of tasks, performance feedback, and onboarding/training.
• Depending on the project, may supervise and mentor research assistants, work-study students, trainees, Graduate Certificate students, and program assistants. May delegate work and provide mentorship to administrative (CUPE 2950) staff.
• Supports capacity-building and leadership development among community collaborators.

Consequence of Error/Judgement
The successful candidate is expected to display a high level of initiative and judgement, and function with a high degree of independence. Errors made in this position may compromise research partnerships, funding relationships, or community trust, and affect the reputation, credibility, and integrity of CMS and the University as a whole. High attention to relational responsibility, ethics, and accountability is required to ensure research integrity and community well-being.
Supervision Received
Reports directly to the CMS Senior Manager. The incumbent also works with the Co-Directors and/or Executive Committee Faculty Community Liaison and Community representative on implementing specific projects and established CMS research, partnership, and training priorities. Must be able to work independently and show a high level of initiative, and concurrently have strong team-work skills.
Supervision Given
May provide, on some projects and initiatives, direct supervision to research assistants, work-study students, trainees, and program assistants; may coordinate contractors and community-based staff. May coordinate the work of staff and/or explain work procedures to new or inexperienced staff as needed.
Minimum Qualifications
Undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline. Minimum of two years of related experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
- Willingness to respect diverse perspectives, including perspectives in conflict with one’s own

- Demonstrates a commitment to enhancing one’s own awareness, knowledge, and skills related to equity, diversity, and inclusion

Preferred Qualifications

• Graduate degree in a relevant discipline preferred.

• Demonstrated experience in community-engaged research and/or program coordination.

• Professional experience in both the university environment and the immigrant-serving community sector is preferred.

• Demonstrated experience coordinating and implementing complex, multi-partner research or community-engaged initiatives, including managing project timelines, deliverables, and partner relationships.

• Demonstrates an understanding of reciprocal, ethical, and equitable community-university engagement; experience conceiving, planning, facilitating, and evaluating reciprocal collaborations among higher education institutions and the communities where they reside is preferred.

• Demonstrated ability to translate strategic objectives into operational work plans and successfully coordinate implementation across multiple projects and partners, showing effective organizational, time management and prioritization skills and the ability to work effectively under pressure to meet deadlines.

• Strong facilitation, coordination and writing skills.

• Ability to exercise diplomacy, tact, and discretion and effectively manage sensitive or polarizing issues.