Marketing and Communications Specialist - Research Communications

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JOB DESCRIPTION AND POSITION REQUIREMENTS:

The Office of Research Communications at Penn State is looking for a creative individual to fill the position of Marketing and Communications Specialist, to help drive the strategies for marketing and communications for Research. This role will help design and execute the strategy for marketing and communications for OSVPR (Office of Senior Vice President for Research), working with the interdisciplinary institutes (including involvement with the colleges as needed), to amplify the awareness, engagement, and conversion within various target audiences. Come join an amazing team!

Reporting to the AVP - Research Marketing and Communications, the Marketing and Communications Specialist will manage both strategic and execution level tasks. This role involves implementing an ambitious, multi-faceted marketing and communications strategy, aimed at elevating Penn State Research. The goal is to attract high-caliber sponsorships, donations, partnerships, faculty, students, and international audiences, which in turn will result in increased awareness, engagement, and conversions, ultimately benefiting the research enterprise across the organization.

Role and Responsibilities: The Marketing and Communications Specialist employs a variety of marketing, communications, and public relations strategies that may include direct mail, advertising, web, email, social media, news media, special events, and other methods; researches and translates various forms of subject matter to produce content for fact sheets, brochures, articles, newsletters, digital signage, and other internal or external communications; participates in the planning of marketing and/or communications strategy; creates, conceptualizes, edits, implements, and enhances communications and content including website, advertisements, articles, and feature stories.

The role encompasses the following responsibilities:

• Business Development Support: Involvement in strategy-building and execution of tactics to drive revenue generation for research through targeted marketing across various channels. This includes supporting research commercialization, partnerships, and philanthropy strategies.
• Marketing and Communications Plan: Assist in developing and executing the marketing strategy, collaborating with leadership and internal stakeholders.
• Research Magazine: Develop and implement strategies to elevate the Research magazine as a strategic asset, attracting donors, sponsors, partners, faculty, students, and others. This includes managing content, digital media, imagery, graphic design, printing, distribution, and metrics.
• Website Management: Develop and implement strategies to expand the OSVPR website, enhancing its representation of organizational needs and stakeholder engagement.
• Social Media: Develop and implement social media strategies, including creating channels, managing content and campaign timelines, evaluating metrics, and making necessary adjustments.
• Best Practices and Tools for Research Communicators: Assist in harmonizing practices across research communicators, identifying opportunities for best practices, tools, SME insights, and events.
• Support for SVPR Speeches/Presentations: Assist in developing speech content, presentations, scripts, and other communication needs for the Senior Vice President for Research (SVPR).
• Articles and Announcements: Support the writing and review of research announcements, articles, collateral, videos, assets, and the annual report, providing recommendations and procuring assets through Strategic Communications processes.
• Events, Webinars, Panels: Assist in planning, scheduling, and executing events for the SVPR and OSVPR communications as outlined in the research marketing and communications strategy.
• Metrics and Tracking: Assist in developing, executing, and analyzing metrics for the marketing and communications strategy, focusing on amplifying communications around "impact."
• Campaign Management: Assist in developing and maintaining a campaign schedule for the research strategy, managing the execution across social, web, digital, print, and other channels.

Education and Experience: This position will be filled at the Senior Professional or the Principal Professional level.

The Senior Professional level requires a minimum of a Bachelor's degree (preferably in the sciences or marketing/communications) and six years of related experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

The Principal Professional level requires a minimum of a Bachelor's degree (preferably in the sciences or marketing/communications) and eight years of related experience, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.

Preferred experience would include a mixture of strategy-setting, business development in life sciences, marketing, communications, graphic design, digital marketing, website design, and metrics and analytics.

The successful candidate for this position will:

• display mastery of defined skill areas/applications, principles, theories and practices, evaluate and enhance existing practices.
• recognize emerging trends in the area of expertise.
• work independently on complex or strategic assignments, direct and delegate appropriate tasks to others and implement strategies to ensure achievement of initiatives.
• prepare written and/or verbal presentations or proposals on complex issues and deliver to broad audiences.
• identify and implement innovative solutions for important, highly complex strategic and/or operational issues.

The Pennsylvania State University is committed to and accountable for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion inallits forms.We embrace individual uniqueness, foster a culture of inclusive excellence that supports both broad and specific diversity initiatives, leverage the educational and institutional benefits of diversity, and engage all individuals to help them thrive. We value inclusive excellence as a core strength and an essential element of our public service mission.

Penn State offers competitive benefits to full-time employees, including medical, dental, vision, and retirement plans, in addition to tuition discounts (75% discount for spouse and children), and paid holidays. Please visit https://hr.psu.edu/current-employee/benefits for more detailed information.

The salary range for this position, including all possible grades is:

Salary Structure - additional information on Penn State's job and salary structure.

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