Analyst, Collaborations and Research | Career Opportunities - ITHAKA S+R

Ithaka S+R is a non-profit research and consulting service. Our Libraries, Scholarly Communication, and Museums (LSCM) team offers unique opportunities for your research skills and project management talent to play a vital role in helping the academic and cultural communities serve the public good and navigate economic, technological, and demographic change. As part of the role you will have a unique opportunity to contribute to our growing work on improving access to higher education for those who are justice involved. 

Team members in our LSCM program conduct and publish major research projects and consult with academic libraries, scholarly publishers, learned societies, and museums. We help these organizations better support scholarship, instruction, community engagement, and student success by empowering them to gather and effectively utilize evidence that supports strong decision-making about strategic direction and service offerings. Our team has methodological expertise in survey research, ethnography and other qualitative methods, and administrative data-gathering, as well as deep relationships with the communities we serve.

The Role

As an Analyst, you will work collaboratively on both research projects and consulting engagements. You will typically serve as project co-lead and have significant responsibility for high-quality, on-time completion of the work while being responsible for coordinating the contributions of other team members on the project. You will work closely with and have an opportunity to learn from our methodological experts, including our Manager of Collaborations and Research, to whom this position will report. Affiliated with our New York office and currently working remotely with the possibility of long-term or permanent remote work, you will be an integral member of Ithaka S+R, taking day-to-day responsibility for our most important projects.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to team efforts to conduct research (mixed methods with a strong emphasis on qualitative research), including:
  • • Conduct desk research, utilizing secondary research sources such as market research data, to address key research questions and inform our understanding of the community
    • Developing research plans and instruments
    • Gathering qualitative and quantitative data, such as through interviewing, collecting quantifiable data via desk research, content analysis
    • Analysis of quantitative data (descriptive only) and qualitative data
    • Reporting findings and recommendations via written and oral presentations to staff and clients at conferences and webinars.
• Project Management and Research Support
  • Provide logistical support for research efforts, such as note taking during interviews and other meetings, collecting and maintaining research metadata, arranging interviews, managing relationships with participants, utilizing data analysis tools, and managing institutional review board processes
  • Coordinate and track activities of numerous stakeholders across multiple institutions and propose ideas for process improvement.
  • Develop strong relationships with internal and external partners.
  • Assist in selecting appropriate tools and methods to suit projects constrained by timeline and/or budget.
• Other
  • Maintain awareness of major community issues that may impact our projects.
  • When COVID-19 related travel restrictions are no longer in place, some travel is required for research, reporting, and representation purposes - approximately 5-10%.

Experience and Skills

We strongly encourage applications from people who have been impacted by the criminal-justice system. Any combination of professional experience, volunteer work, coursework, and other transferable skills may be applied toward these qualifications.

• Required
  • Bachelor’s degree and two years of relevant experience related to the communities we serve (e.g. education programs serving the justice involved, libraries, museums, or scholarly communications).
  • Interest in and knowledge of the missions of expanding access to higher education, racial justice, and/or ending mass incarceration.
  • One to three years of experience in managing complex projects.
  • Highly effective in communication with both internal and external stakeholders.
  • Demonstrated ability to translate complex concepts and research data into compelling, accessible, well-written reports and engaging presentations.
  • Ability to prioritize and manage multiple assignments concurrently, perform well under pressure, and meet deadlines while ensuring acute attention to detail and accuracy.
  • Superior research, writing, proofreading, and interpersonal skills.
  • Ability to work in our open, collaborative, and team-orie