The Yellow House is dedicated to enhancing the development and wellbeing of equity seeking student communities at Queen’s. Reporting to the Director, Yellow House Centre for Student Equity & Inclusion, the Departmental Assistant provides overall administrative and clerical support for operations at the Yellow House, including support and organization of programs and events and liaising with a wide range of internal and external partners across students, staff and faculty. Using an inclusive approach, the Assistant will engage with individual students and student groups to build awareness of development initiatives, programming and events tailored for equity deserving students.

The schedule for this position requires the incumbent to work variable hours, including evenings and weekends.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Organizes and facilitates reception duties, including leadership of student reception staff, with a primary focus on client service, greeting individuals, providing a welcoming environment and responding in a timely manner to requests.
• Acts as a resource and contact for the unit, providing advice, information and support to students, staff and faculty. Researches Queen’s websites to determine answers when necessary and/or redirect complex questions to appropriate individual or department.
• Assist colleagues to plan and coordinate a full suite of event designs, concepts, and measures to serve and engage equity deserving students on campus which includes but is not limited to logistics planning, drafting layouts, proposing event sequences, coordinating set up and tear down details, speaking notes, access for service partners, facilitator scheduling, room bookings, online registration and workshop reminders.
• Liaise with equity deserving student communities as well as staff and faculty broadly to facilitate and support inclusive programming that is culturally relevant to a diverse set of student communities.
• Organizes, schedules and maintains daily operational and administrative requirements of the unit which includes, but is not limited to calendar management, provision of office supplies, and departmental security fobs and keys, computers, equipment, university software and furnishings for the office. Plans and forecasts supply needs.
• Develop and implement communications and marketing material. Recommends, writes, edits, proofreads, and updates descriptions about Yellow House events and programs.
• Provides work direction, and technical/functional guidance to student staff. Schedules and assigns work and oversees its completion.  Coordinates and monitors workflow.
• Act as primary liaison with Campus Security and Physical Plant services for all routine matters of housekeeping, maintenance and safety.
• Acts as the unit safety officer if required.
• Undertakes other duties as assigned in support of the unit or department.

SPECIAL SKILLS:

• Strong communication skills to gather information and deliver key messages accurately and with empathy to students, staff, faculty and third-party service providers.
• Experience working closely with student leaders, student clubs and societies in a post-secondary environment
• Strong interpersonal skills (creative, diplomatic, interculturally sensitive, tactful, etc.).
• Ability to establish and maintain effective working relationships with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders.
• Demonstrated analytical, interpretive, and problem-solving skills.
• Knowledge of social media tools and resources.
• Ability to adapt to a changing environment with initiative and flexibility.
• Must be a team player. Able to win cooperation, to facilitate groups of people to work together toward success in shared goals.
• Excellent time management and organizational skills, including ability to adapt effectively to changing priorities, work with minimal supervision and manage time effectively

DECISION-MAKING:

• In collaboration with senior staff, identifies optimum practices for organizing and publicizing events and programs by evaluating several factors such as cost, need, interest, etc.
• Determine when to elevate more complex concerns and decisions to the Director.
• Anticipates, analyzes and solves problems, and recommends solutions.
• Determines content of various materials, including publications, event promotion, advertising, social media posts, web content, meeting materials and reports.
• Ability to prioritize work to meet multiple demands.
• Determines priorities and makes decisions about student staff utilization and the assignment of work to achieve optimum efficiencies and productivity. Monitors and assess output and quality of student staff’s work.