Executive Director of Growth and Engagement

The Executive Director of Growth and Engagement provides executive vision, leadership, and strategic oversight for initiatives that expand institutional visibility, strengthen brand awareness, grow enrollment pipelines, and deepen stakeholder connection through traditional, digital, and emerging engagement platforms. This position serves as a key connector between campus programs and services, institutional leadership, prospective learners, alumni, industry partners, and external audiences to ensure that educational opportunities, outreach strategies, communications efforts, and engagement initiatives align with institutional goals and market demand.

The position oversees the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of integrated strategies related to enrollment growth, audience development, communications, digital engagement, stakeholder outreach, and market responsiveness across institutional offerings. This role provides executive leadership for institutional storytelling, multi-platform communications, virtual audience engagement, and brand amplification efforts designed to elevate institutional reputation, strengthen learner and stakeholder loyalty, and increase engagement across physical and digital environments.

Additionally, the Executive Director provides strategic leadership for alumni engagement, corporate partnerships, and external stakeholder communications while fostering innovative approaches to audience interaction, learner conversion, and community-building through data-informed outreach and engagement strategies. This role requires extensive collaboration with academic leadership, faculty, enrollment management, communications and marketing teams, student lift and support units, and external stakeholders to support institutional growth, learner persistence, workforce alignment, and sustained audience engagement. This position reports to the CEO and Dean.

Kansas State University Salina Aerospace and Technology Campus is located in Salina, Kansas - a town of approximately 50,000 in close proximity to two major highways, and 65 miles west of K-State's main campus in Manhattan. The Salina campus is centered around the student experience emphasizing innovative learning, real-world experiences and industry connections. We are a tight-knit family with a small college feel and the resources of a Big 12 university.

This position is On-site.

All employees must reside in the United States when they begin working to comply with state law. K-State is unable to provide remote or hybrid work opportunities for residents of the state of Idaho.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Requires a bachelor's degree and seven years of relevant experience. Education beyond the minimum degree requirement may count toward required experience if deemed relevant by the hiring manager.
  
  The degree requirement ensures candidates possess the financial management expertise, strategic planning capabilities and analytical skills essential for developing and articulating a shared vision, constructing and monitoring budgetary metrics and identifying program needs and assessment procedures. These competencies are typically developed and rigorously validated only through the comprehensive curriculum and intensive experiential experience inherent in a formal degree program.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong knowledge of best practices inrecruitment,sales, and marketing strategies.
• Proven ability to innovate and adapt to changing customer and institutional needs.
• Success as a collaborator with strong interpersonal skills
• Experience managing a budget.

Additional Role Information:

• Valid driver's license required upon hire.

Sponsorship eligibility:

Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the U.S. on an ongoing basis without sponsorship

Please submit the following documents:

• Letter of Interest
• Resume

Applications close on: June 17, 2026

$140,000-$165,000. Salary offers commensurate with education and experience.