Job Posting: SFPIRG Director of Research and Education

Temporary (1-year contract to start with), 19 hours/week

Wage rate: $37.68/hr with benefits

Starting date: January 9, 2023

Application deadline is November 1 at 9am.

The Simon Fraser Public Interest Research Group (SFPIRG) is a student-funded and student-directed resource centre dedicated to engaging students in social and environmental justice. Established in 1981, the organisation is a registered non-profit governed by a student board of directors and managed by a unionised staff collective (CUPE Local 3338, Unit 7). SFPIRG strives to be non-hierarchical in its structure and consensus decision-making is used at all levels of the organisation.

Position Overview:

The Director of Research and Education is one of the three co-Executive Directors that make up SFPIRG’s staff collective. (The other two are the Director of Engagement and the Director of Administration). The three co-executives are jointly responsible for the overall management of SFPIRG, including operating in accordance with SFPIRG’s values, strategic planning, fiscal management, personnel management, policy development, board relations, and member welfare.

The Director of Research and Education is specifically responsible for supporting the learning and research needs of SFU students, staff and faculty, and the broader community. See below for a detailed list of position specific tasks and activities. The position involves extensive work with volunteers, the SFPIRG board, temporary staff, and students, while also juggling multiple projects and campaigns. Managing all of this requires a great deal of mutual care and open communication between all members of the staff team. Our goal is to ensure that no one, and no one’s well-being, is treated as expendable in this work, and that each team member is able to maintain a balance that is reasonable for them personally, given their own strengths and needs. Applicants must value process, collective work, and consensus decision-making within an intersectional anti-oppression framework. 

Applicants must be able to balance heavy workloads across multiple tasks, work efficiently in a busy environment, and provide a strong leadership role in organising and mentoring SFPIRG’s communications systems and the organisation as a whole. Applicants must value process, collective work, and consensus decision-making within an intersectional anti-oppression framework. SFPIRG is currently undergoing an internal review of its organisational structures, so flexibility and willingness to support long-term visioning and projects is an asset.

Values, Skills, and Experience Required: 

  • Demonstrated commitment to social and environmental justice and progressive social change. 
  • Strong intersectional anti-oppression analysis and practice, grounded in transformative justice principles, including: compassionate accountability, abolition, non-disposability, and making space and opportunity for learning and growth.
  • Experience with on-campus student and/or grassroots community organising. Knowledge of broader student movements and their histories is helpful.
  • Practical experience engaging with and implementing disability justice, accessibility and universal design
  • Experience with workshop facilitation and anti-oppressive curriculum development with train-the-trainer facilitation being an asset. 
  • Interest and experience working in a mentorship capacity with diverse youth and young adults.
  • Ability to translate vision into action, understand long-term communications and networking strategy, prioritise and delegate tasks
  • Excellent communication skills: clear written and verbal communication, conflict resolution, facilitation, ability to dialogue with diverse parties, ability to openly give and accept feedback.
  • Human Resources experience: hiring, coordinating, working with student workers and volunteers.
  • Experience and interest in working in a collective setting using consensus.
  • Extremely well-organised, attention to detail, excellent time-management skills.
  • Ability to be self-directed and efficient in a sometimes hectic environment.
  • A sense of humour and a commitment to compassion.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Position Specific Duties

  • Developing educational print and online materials on a range of social and environmental justice issues
  • Developing and delivering educational curricula as part of SFPIRG’s programming
  • Developing and delivering custom workshops and other educational opportunities for the campus community
  • Providing training to SFPIRG Board and volunteers
  • Supporting students who want to develop their workshop design and facilitation skills
  • Working one-on-one with students who are conducting their own research projects, or who seek to bring social and environmental justice issues into their course work
  • Striving to support the development of, and share information about, equity based critiques of, and alternatives to, traditional academic understandings of what “research” is.
  • Ensuring that the SFPIRG library resources are regularly assessed and updated as resources allow
  • Providing training and support for Letters for the Inside project
  • Being a point person for any research projects undertaken by SFPIRG as an organisation
  • Coordinating research projects that SFPIRG chooses to take on as an organisation

Shared Duties

  • As part of the staff team, continually work to grow our capacity to put the values of the organisation into day-to-day action
  • Work with the other staff to manage SFPIRG: staff and maintain the office and resource lounge; respond to requests from students and the public
  • Participate in SFPIRG organisational work, initiatives and events; mentor and advise the Board of Directors
  • Contribute to ongoing organisational development of SFPIRG including strategic planning, hiring staff and work study students, working with volunteers, Action Group support, and staff collective development
  • Collaborate with the staff collective to determine and prioritise the goals for each semester, including programming, and to delegate the day-to-day management of the organisation
  • Share in making financial decisions and developing the budget

Application Procedure:

SFPIRG is an affirmative action employer. In order to increase the range and diversity of skills, perspectives and experience presently existing within SFPIRG, hiring preference shall be given to qualified applicants from groups who face systemic barriers to employment, including systemic barriers that often go unnamed and unacknowledged. Applicants who wish to be considered for affirmative action are encouraged to discuss this in their cover letter. We also encourage applicants to include other skills and experiences in addition to those outlined above. SFPIRG is committed to accommodating people with mental and physical disabilities, including, for example, obtaining necessary adaptive technologies.

Please submit cover letter and resume by email to:

Email:  hiring-committee@sfpirg.ca

Attention: Director of Research and Education Hiring Committee

Please include your cover letter and resume in ONE attached document, with your name as the title of the file. 

Application deadline is November 1 at 9am.

No phone or email inquiries please. Late applications will not be accepted. 

Only short-listed applicants will be contacted. This will happen by Friday, November 4

Important – Please note: Short-listed candidates should be prepared to do a 5-minute presentation of a social justice topic of your choice. 

Interviews will be scheduled between November 7-12, and will be conducted with the hiring committee virtually through Google Meet.