EARTH Digital Platform Coordinator
- Employer
- The University of Kansas
- Location
- University of Kansas Lawrence Campus
View more categoriesView less categories
- Employment Type
- Full Time
- Institution Type
- Four-Year Institution
Job Details
To address this challenge, a new NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC): Environmentally Applied Refrigerant Technology Hub (EARTH) is creating a “sustainable refrigerant lifecycle” to address technical, environmental, and societal challenges facing the HVACR industry. EARTH is a multi-institution, multi-disciplinary team from the University of Kansas, University of Notre Dame, University of Hawai'i, University of Maryland, University of South Dakota, and Lehigh University.
This is a 100%, twelve-month, benefits-eligible, regular appointment that reports directly to the ERC EARTH Administrative Director. Currently, the position is designated as on-campus. Alternative and flexible work schedules will be evaluated as per ERC EARTH policy and center guidelines.
The EARTH Community Forum Administrator is responsible for administering and maintaining EARTH’s external community platform and associated website content operations. The role requires independent judgment, access-control discipline, stakeholder-facing communication, platform administration experience, content workflow management, and the ability to coordinate across academic, industry, public, and administrative functions. The position is operationally autonomous within defined policy boundaries and supports the growth of the platform into a broader community engagement asset.
Job Description50% Community Platform Administration
- Administer the community forum platform, including user accounts, groups, permissions, discussion categories, content areas, notification settings, and platform configuration within delegated authority.
- Maintain public, member-restricted, and limited-access areas consistent with approved access policies, membership categories, and stakeholder needs.
- Configure and maintain discussion spaces, resource libraries, announcement areas, member-facing pages, working group spaces, and other approved platform areas.
- Coordinate with platform vendors, university information technology personnel, communications staff, and EARTH leadership to resolve operational issues and support platform enhancements.
- Maintain platform housekeeping practices, including archiving obsolete content, reviewing navigation structures, managing outdated pages or categories, and escalating issues requiring policy or leadership review.
- Support implementation of platform features such as member profiles, announcements, discussion boards, event follow-up spaces, curated content collections, and stakeholder resource areas.
- Maintain administrative documentation sufficient to support continuity of platform operations.
- Support and maintain approved EARTH website content as part of the broader community forum effort, including public pages, member-facing resources, announcements, events, staff information, industry-facing information, and other approved web content.
- Coordinate content intake, review, approval-routing, posting, revision, and retirement workflows for website and forum materials.
- Work with EARTH staff and subject matter experts to translate approved source materials into organized, accessible, and user-friendly website or forum content.
- Maintain basic content taxonomy, tagging, navigation consistency, version awareness, and content lifecycle practices across the forum and website.
- Support consistency between the EARTH website and community forum, including cross-linking, resource placement, event follow-up, announcements, and member-facing information.
- Coordinate with communications, web support, institutional branding, accessibility, or information technology personnel when website changes exceed the position’s delegated authority.
- Identify outdated, duplicative, incomplete, or hard-to-find website and forum content and recommend corrective action.
- Support basic web accessibility practices and coordinate with appropriate university personnel when content, documents, or platform features raise accessibility concerns.
- Manage named-user access for approved EARTH industry members, academic partners, staff, students, advisors, and invited stakeholders.
- Maintain role-based access control structures aligned with membership status, committee participation, working group assignments, content sensitivity, and approved public/private segmentation.
- Coordinate user onboarding and offboarding workflows for external users, including new member representatives, departing users, changed company contacts, and time-limited stakeholder access.
- Maintain user-access records, membership contact lists, group assignments, access lists, and operational documentation.
- Support accurate implementation of membership-tier access, committee access, advisory access, working group access, and other approved access categories.
- Monitor access issues and route ambiguous cases to the appropriate EARTH leader, Industry Liaison Officer, Innovation Officer, university office, or designated decision-maker.
- Escalate access requests involving confidential materials, unpublished research, intellectual property, export-control concerns, membership agreements, or other restricted information.
- Provide front-line operational support to forum users, including account access, navigation assistance, content location support, notification settings, posting questions, and routine troubleshooting.
- Support forum activity by posting approved prompts, announcements, event follow-up materials, discussion starters, resources, and member-facing updates.
- Assist with routine moderation workflows, including monitoring posts, flagging inappropriate or misplaced content, routing technical questions, and escalating sensitive issues.
- Support member onboarding and orientation to the forum, including preparation of user guides, frequently asked questions, short instructions, and platform-use materials.
- Help ensure that the forum remains organized, current, accessible, and useful to industry members, academic partners, students, staff, advisory members, and approved stakeholders.
- Identify recurring user needs, content gaps, platform friction points, and operational issues that may require process improvement or leadership attention.
- Support the transition from a static content repository model toward a more active community platform model.
- Track and report routine forum and website metrics, such as user registrations, active users, discussion activity, content views, member engagement, resource use, support requests, and content updates.
- Prepare periodic operational summaries for EARTH leadership and other relevant staff, including program reporting requirements.
- Recommend improvements to navigation, access-control workflows, content organization, member onboarding, website usability, and platform operations.
- Maintain standard operating procedures, administrative documentation, content calendars, access-control procedures, and platform-management records.
- Support future evolution of the forum operating model as EARTH’s member community, public-facing resources, and stakeholder engagement needs mature.
- Assist in evaluating whether additional platform features, integrations, workflows, or administrative practices are needed.
- Coordinate with the Industry Liaison Officer, Innovation Officer, Research Project Manager, Education and Workforce Development Director, communications staff, program management staff, researchers, students, and other EARTH personnel as needed.
- Work with industry member representatives and approved stakeholders in a professional, service-oriented manner.
- Support cross-functional workflows involving public information, member-restricted information, event follow-up, committee support, working group activity, and curated resource collections.
- Maintain appropriate confidentiality and discretion when handling member lists, restricted materials, unpublished information, access rights, and operational issues.
- Participate in planning discussions related to forum operations, website needs, content governance, platform improvement, and member support.
- Recognize that final strategy and policy decisions rest with designated EARTH leadership, while providing effective platform implementation and administration of the community forum and related website functions.
- High School diploma or GED + 5 years related experience OR Bachelors degree in related field + 1 year of related experience
- Two or more years of professional experience administering or substantially supporting a digital platform, website, online community, member portal, learning platform, content management system, customer support portal, association platform, or comparable system.
- Demonstrated ability to manage user accounts, permissions, content areas, workflows, or platform configuration in a structured digital environment, as evidenced by application materials.
- Strong organizational skills and ability to maintain accurate records, lists, documentation, calendars, and operating procedures, as evidenced by application materials.
- Ability to work independently within defined policies and escalate issues appropriately.
- Strong written communication skills and ability to prepare clear user-facing instructions, announcements, summaries, and support materials.
- Demonstrated judgment in handling restricted information, access-control issues, stakeholder communications, and operational ambiguity.
- Ability to work with technical, academic, industry, administrative, and external stakeholder audiences.
- Degree, coursework, or professional experience in a science, technology, engineering, or mathematics field, or demonstrated experience supporting technical, research-intensive, engineering, product development, or academic-industry collaboration environments.
- Three or more years of relevant experience in digital platform administration, website administration, community platform operations, member portal administration, or comparable stakeholder-facing digital operations.
- Experience with B2C or B2B community platforms, forum platforms, association platforms, or member engagement systems such as Higher Logic Vanilla, Higher Logic Thrive, Invision Community, Discourse, Member365, Hivebrite, or similar systems.
- Experience with website administration or content management systems such as Drupal, WordPress, SharePoint, or comparable platforms.
- Experience supporting public and restricted-access content environments.
- Experience with role-based access control, named-user account management, member onboarding, or external stakeholder access workflows.
- Experience in a university, research center, consortium, association, nonprofit, professional society, technology-transfer, or industry-engagement environment.
- Familiarity with accessibility, web governance, content lifecycle management, information architecture, metadata, tagging, or content taxonomy practices.
- Ability to interpret user feedback, platform analytics, and operational patterns to recommend practical improvements.
- Familiarity with research, innovation, technology commercialization, engineering, energy, refrigerants, cooling, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration, or academic-industry partnership environments.
- online application
- cover letter
- resume
- three professional references
Organization
Working at the University of Kansas
Join the University of Kansas, and you’ll become part of a Jayhawk family that spans the globe. Wear your KU shirt in London, Istanbul, Buenos Aires, Nairobi or anywhere else, and you will likely hear a resounding “Rock Chalk!” from a stranger. Of course, the appropriate response is an enthusiastic “Jayhawk!” Because, after all, they’re not really strangers, they’re family.
The Jayhawk community is united by more than 150 years of tradition and by our commitment to pushing the boundaries of knowledge, transforming the academic experience, and creating solutions through innovative research. KU’s mission is to lift students and society by educating leaders, building healthy communities and making discoveries that change the world.
The University of Kansas is the state’s flagship university and one of just 66 invited members of the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU). We consistently earn high rankings for academics and recognition as a premier research university.
KU faculty and staff embrace our role as the state’s flagship university, AAU member and R1 institution that serves the state, nation and world. We celebrate the energy and compassion that infuse the Jayhawk spirit; and, we remain true to KU’s historic values: the elevating force of education, the transformative power of research and the healing power of service.
Instruction
KU offers a broad array of undergraduate and graduate study programs, and we fulfill our mission through academic and research programs of international distinction, coupled with outstanding libraries, teaching museums and information technology. These resources enrich the academic experience for students from all 50 states and 112 countries, and provide enrichment resources for KU faculty and staff.
Research
The university attains high levels of research productivity and recognizes that faculty are part of a network of scholars and academicians that shape a discipline as well as teach it. KU staff are integral to our research success, participating in and supporting discoveries that expand knowledge and improve lives.
Service
The university and our employees serve society through research, teaching and the preservation and dissemination of knowledge. KU's academic programs, arts facilities and public programs provide cultural enrichment opportunities for the larger community. And, KU offers educational, research and service programs throughout the state. KU employees are encouraged to participate in and serve the campus and surrounding communities in a way that is meaningful to them.
International Dimension
KU offers more than 100 programs of international study and cooperative research for KU students and faculty at sites around the world. The university offers teaching and research that draw upon and contribute to the most advanced developments throughout the United States and abroad. At the same time, KU's extensive international ties support economic development in Kansas.
Values
The University of Kansas, our students and employees are committed to excellence. We foster a multicultural, inclusive environment in which the dignity and rights of individuals are respected. Intellectual diversity, integrity and disciplined inquiry in the search for knowledge are of paramount importance.
Our City and State
KU sits atop Mt. Oread in the center of Lawrence, a town full of natural beauty and culture. In fact, Rolling Stone magazine named Lawrence one of the best college towns in the United States. Lawrence is home to more than 100,000 people, and has a charming, Midwestern friendliness that welcomes visitors and celebrates diversity. In addition to KU, Lawrence is home to Haskell Indian Nations University, the premiere tribal university in the United States.
Lawrence’s historic and thriving downtown features restaurants, nightlife and local shops offering unique finds that you won’t find anywhere else. The town has more than 50 parks, an encompassing mixed-use trail, and quick access to biking/hiking trails along the Kansas River and around Clinton Lake. A five-minute drive from Lawrence, Clinton Lake offers fishing, boating, beaches, camping and other outdoor activities.
Located just 40 minutes west of Kansas City, Lawrence offers the appeal of a mid-size, suburban town with quick access to the amenities of a large city, including an international airport. The Kansas City metro area is home to world-class museums and cultural activities, Jazz clubs and other nightlife venues, expansive shopping options, and exciting professional sports with the Kansas City Chiefs, Kansas City Royals and Sporting KC.
Kansas is in the center of the country, making it convenient and cost effective to fly or drive to destinations throughout the United States. Far from flat, the Flint Hills, just 90 minutes from Lawrence, offer panoramic vistas that showcase the breathtaking beauty of America.
Making KU Your Home
Something about Lawrence is magnetic. Long-time residents are never surprised when a KU student or employee from out of state decides to make Lawrence their permanent home. And, even those who do leave often find themselves returning to “the nest” at some point in the future. In fact, Lawrence has been named by several publications as one of the best places to retire.
At the University of Kansas, you’ll join a global Jayhawk family and find a place to call home.
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