Job Description

Wellesley College Botanic Gardens (WCBG) is a curated public garden that supports a holistic liberal arts education, engaging students of all majors and backgrounds in experiential learning with unique botanical resources. All members of the WCBG staff serve as educators, mentoring students and collaborating with faculty/staff partners to co-create, study, and adaptively maintain 20+ acres of designed ecological landscapes, specialty gardens, subtropical greenhouses, and a visitor center, all located centrally on campus.

The Associate Director works in close collaboration with the Director to shape WCBG’s educational priorities, and leads student and visitor engagement through communications, interpretation, events, and programs, including research and art-making opportunities. Centering inclusive excellence and advancing diverse approaches to gaining botanical knowledge and skills, the Associate Director cultivates college-wide partnerships to help ensure best use of WCBG’s resources for education and community building.

Primary Position Responsibilities:

• Program leadership and administration

  • Lead and manage WCBG experiential learning programs (work-study and internships), including student recruiting, hiring, mentoring, onboarding and community building during the academic year and summer terms

  • Assist the Director with budget planning, program development and assessment

  • Supervise Academic Administrator on routine administrative tasks including gift management, student grant opportunities, and support for students and visitors

• Experiential education in horticulture, ecology, environmental justice, botanical humanities, or other plant-related fields

  • Mentor student and postbac fellow projects in the greenhouses and gardens, such as research, artwork, media, or events, within the Associate Director’s expertise

  • Build collaborations with faculty and other campus partners for teaching, research, and programmatic use of the WCBG’s resources

• Inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility (IDEA) and community engagementducation in horticulture, ecology, environmental justice, botanical humanities, or other plant-related fields

  • Lead inclusive community building and campus engagement with the WCBG, in collaboration with students and staff

  • Build collaborations with local or public partners in alignment with IDEA goals, WCBG mission, and Wellesley College mission

• Communications and events

  • Manage student-facing communications and media for WCBG, and assist the Director on communications for the broader Wellesley College community, WCBG Friends, alums and the general public

  • Collaborate with the Director on WCBG-led events, such as the Greenhouse Light Show

  • Coordinate WCBG participation in campus-wide events, including Orientation and Reunion, in collaboration with the Frost Center for Environment, Office of Student Wellness, and other campus partners

  • Supervise the Academic Administrator to support campus events and space use

• Exhibits and interpretation

  • Mentor students and post-bac fellows to co-create WCBG exhibits and interpretive materials that reflect their interests and experiences

  • Work with students and the Academic Administrator to maintain welcoming and informational displays in the Visitor Center and Global Flora Link

• Visitor experience

• • Lead students in managing visitor experience, including training and supervising students as WCBG greeters and tour guides

  • Collaboratively support public visitor hours and events, including possibly some weekend days

  • Work with the Academic Administrator to support visitor access and tours

Supervisor Responsibilities:

• Academic Administrator (for Botanic Gardens portion of shared AA role)

• student assistants

• Post-baccalaureate Fellow, when the focus of the fellowship is on student programs or other aspects of the Associate Director’s purview and expertise

Education Required:

• minimum master’s degree in a botany-related field, or equivalent experience

Experience Required

• at least one year managing and mentoring students in an educational setting (preferably botanically or environmentally focused)

Skills and Abilities Required:

• excellent communication skills, strong organizational skills and attention to detail, ability to engage and mentor diverse Wellesley students, to build relationships in the broader community, to collaborate productively with staff and faculty across campus, and to work independently towards short-term goals and the larger mission of the WCBG

About Wellesley College

Wellesley is known for the excellence of its education, the beauty of its setting, its gifted faculty, and the uniqueness of its campus culture. But most of all, Wellesley is known for the thousands of accomplished, thoughtful women it has sent out into the world for over 100 years women who are committed to making a difference. Every year, some 2,400 of the world's top undergraduate women are challenged to exceed their own highest personal and intellectual expectations. The mastery Wellesley graduates demonstrate across the professional and vocational spectrum, and the influence they wield, whether in their own communities or on the world stage is testament to a singularly empowering undergraduate experience. Wellesley's lively academic community places a high value on rigorous, probing inquiry, and creative, cross-discipline thinking. Its collaborative approach to scholarship encourages students to question, debate, and refine their points of view, not only with each other, but with our world-class faculty, often by working directly with them on groundbreaking projects. A Wellesley education fosters the highest standard of readiness for the real world in its graduates, in terms ... of ability to think, act, and contribute meaningfully and effectively in their chosen areas of interest.

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