Position Summary
The College of Natural Science is hiring an HR Director to oversee and manage all HR functions within the college. The Director will provide strategic oversight of employee relations, talent acquisition, development, immigration, and workforce planning, while ensuring compliance with university policies and processes. Key responsibilities include succession planning, performance management, data analysis, and serving as the point of escalation for HR issues. This is a new full-time position.
The College of Natural Science (NatSci) includes 28 departments and programs in the biological, physical, and mathematical sciences. With $83M in annual research expenditures, it provides world-class educational opportunities to over 6,000 undergraduates and 1,200 graduate and postdoctoral scholars. NatSci has 800+ faculty and academic staff, and 200+ support staff. The college fosters a collaborative, inclusive environment, encouraging growth and success for all. Its diverse disciplines promote interdisciplinary research and partnerships across the University. The main work location is the Natural Science building on MSU’s East Lansing campus.
POSITION SUMMARY
The College of Natural Science (NatSci) HR Director is a key member of the executive leadership team, reporting to the Dean, and is expected to be an enterprise-wide strategic thinker who works collaboratively with other leaders. The HR Director will be tasked with creating a network of HR professionals within the college to share best practices and develop a high-performing HR team.
The HR Director is a strategic leader responsible for driving the people strategy, operations, and resource planning for NatSci human resources. This role ensures the delivery of high-quality HR services that align with and support the unit and university’s mission and objectives. The HR Director plays a pivotal role in developing and executing HR strategy that is aligned across the organization while ensuring compliance with all relevant laws, regulations, and policies. The HR Director collaborates closely with central human resources to ensure consistency in HR practices, leverage institutional resources, and drive university-wide initiatives that enhance organizational effectiveness and the employee experience. Additionally, the role involves developing and implementing HR strategies and initiatives to attract, recruit, retain, and develop top talent, supporting the college's vision and goals.
The HR Director will partner with academic and operational leadership to address behavioral, organizational, and cultural challenges, including Investigation, Support, and Resolution (ISR) cases. They will provide HR support and expertise to foster accountability, ensuring a safe, respectful, and inclusive work environment with equitable practices.
The responsibilities of this position have been identified in the below priority areas.
These priority areas will move the NatSci Strategic Plan 2022-2026 forward in support of the six priority domains, with specific emphasis on the two priority domains identified below.
- Grow and support a welcoming, diverse NatSci community that empowers the best outcomes for all regardless of role, identity, or ability status.
- Demonstrate transparency, accountability, professionalism, and respectful communication in ways that contribute to the greater good of all.
Success in the six domains is highly interdependent. A vision for diversity, equity, and inclusion must encompass all stakeholders in the College. Recruiting and retaining the best faculty, and staff depends on building a community to which everyone is proud to belong.
(Characteristic Duties and Responsibilities):
- Serves as a subject matter expert, collaborating with leadership to guide strategic decisions that shape long-term workforce planning, talent development, and organizational effectiveness. Takes a proactive role in addressing complex, high-stakes challenges, ensuring that solutions drive institutional success and align with the organization’s mission and goals.
- Develop and implement a people and talent strategy that aligns with and delivers on the goals outlined in the Strategic Plan, ensuring the alignment of HR priorities with the strategic needs of assigned area, supporting academic and business objectives.
- Maintains a dotted-line reporting relationship with central human resources, ensuring alignment of unit-level HR strategies with institutional policies and frameworks. Works closely with central HR leadership to provide input on broader HR initiatives and ensure effective communication and coordination between the unit and university HR functions.
- Take ownership of HR strategy execution and change management ensuring initiatives are effectively implemented and deliver desired outcomes.
- Oversee the recruitment process through the development of effective talent acquisition strategies, managing candidate selection, and ensuring adherence to university hiring policies and best practices. Collaborates with department leaders to identify staffing needs, support diverse and inclusive hiring processes, and provide guidance on workforce planning to meet the college’s long-term goals.
- Oversee day-to-day HR operations, ensuring efficient and timely delivery of transactional services, including position descriptions, the academic hiring process, offer letters, and annual reviews. Ensures workflows are optimized for timely review and appropriate economies of scale to manage workloads effectively.
- Effectively communicate the HR strategy to key stakeholders, ensuring strong buy-in from academic, administrative, and operational teams.
- Oversee large-scale HR initiatives, including organizational redesign, workforce planning, and succession planning.
- Serve as the primary contact for all OIE/ISR reports, coordinating with academic administrators, FASA, central HR, and OCR to manage investigations and resolutions.
- Prepare employee-related background materials for the Dean, including tenure and promotion documents, FOIA requests, and ISR/OIE case details.
- Facilitate the onboarding of NatSci administrators, chairs, and program directors for smooth leadership transitions and manages reappointment, promotion, and tenure processes for faculty/staff, ensuring consistency and transparency.
Position will be expected to maintain a regular schedule working on campus a minimum of 4 days per week.
Minimum Requirements
- Knowledge equivalent to that which normally would be acquired by completing a four year college degree program in Human Resources, Business or related field;
- Five to eight years of related and progressively more responsible or expansive work experience in human resources and/or labor relations, project management, data and/or statistical analysis, program development and implementation;
- Experience working in an academic environment.
- Strong generalist background with experience managing key employee issues such as FMLA, ADA, performance issues, conflict resolution, critical thinking, etc.
- Practical exposure to planning and driving organizational transformation as it relates to operational efficiencies, people capabilities and culture change.
- Experience writing and implementing new policies, modifying existing policies for operational efficiency.
- Experience building out and maintaining industry specific compliance programs.
- Experience in conflict de-escalation and resolution preferred.
- Or an equivalent combination or education and experience
Desired Qualifications
- Master’s degree preferred.
- 10+ years of progressive HR experience with demonstrate growth in responsibility required with a minimum of 5 years' of management experience.
- 15+ years’ overall experience
- Proficiency with EBS, Kuali, Power BI, Query Studio, Tableau.
- Ability to build trust and good faith with a broad range of stakeholders, including the Dean and NatSci Executive Leadership Team. Able to critically analyze, challenge and push back appropriately.
- Possesses a pragmatic and problem-solving approach to all areas of Human Resources.
- Demonstrates sound judgement and decision making.
Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, citizenship, age, disability or protected veteran status.
Required Application Materials
Current Resume
Cover letter
Work Hours
STANDARD 8-5
Bidding Eligibility ends November 14, 2024 at 11:55 PM
