Founded in 1863, Boston College is a Jesuit, Catholic university located six miles from downtown Boston with an enrollment of 9,484 full-time undergraduates and 5,250 graduate and professional students. Ranked 35 among national universities, Boston College has 888 full-time and 1,281 FTE faculty, 2,711 non-faculty employees, an operating budget of $1.4 billion, and an endowment in excess of $3.5 billion.
Job Description
The Initiative:
The mission of the Initiative on Land, Housing & Property Rights (the Initiative) is to address real property issues that impact poor and disadvantaged communities. Many of the activities the Initiative undertakes assist disadvantaged communities that have been harmed as a result of lacking adequate land, housing, and other property rights. The Initiative’s core activities include training law students and other students to develop legal and other technical expertise that can be used by these students when they are in school and after they graduate to help disadvantaged people and communities address their land and housing issues; catalyzing both theoretical and applied, policy-relevant research on various land and housing issues that have been understudied and undertheorized; proactively working to develop impactful legal reform and policy solutions to address property problems disadvantaged communities experience; and sponsoring both continuing legal education programs for lawyers and community legal education and other outreach programs for disadvantaged communities.
Position Summary
The Initiative seeks a Research Associate to help build the Initiative’s research program under the direction of the Research Director. The goal is to produce timely, high quality, and policy-relevant research to inform a variety of stakeholders, including academics, other researchers, and policymakers. Overall, the research team is responsible for at least four (4) different research projects with some of these projects being collaborative projects with researchers outside of the Initiative.
The Initiative produces theoretical and applied research addressing critical property issues affecting disadvantaged communities. The research will be generated using a variety of methodologies, including quantitative, qualitative, mixed methods, and doctrinal, a research method many legal academic researchers use.
Much of the research the Initiative produces will be policy-relevant, designed to help advance legal reform and policy solutions to certain housing and property issues as well as community development challenges various disadvantaged communities face. At the same time, some of the research the Initiative produces will mostly be theoretical or otherwise primarily intended to advance knowledge about various housing, property, and community development matters.
As part of its research activities, the Initiative sponsors conferences, symposia, seminars, workshops, and other gatherings. In addition to academics and other researchers, many of these gatherings are open to other constituencies, including students, those in government service, and the public.
The Research Associate will work under the supervision of the Research Director. To help decide what research projects to pursue, the Research Associate will work with the Research Director, other Initiative personnel, and external stakeholders to develop the Initiative’s research agenda. The Research Associate will also work with other members of the research team and other Initiative staff to ensure the timeliness and quality of research projects at each stage of every project. As needed, the Research Associate will provide support to the Research Director in identifying funding opportunities for research projects and in helping to draft funding proposals to support the Initiative’s research work.
Applicants should have strong organizational and communication skills, experience working in a collaborative environment, and a commitment to improving outcomes related to real property issues that impact poor and disadvantaged communities.
This is a hybrid position with a minimum of two days per week in the Initiative’s office and availability for meetings in the Boston area. There will be some travel, primarily in New England and the Mid-Atlantic region, though there also may be travel required to other parts of the United States.
Duties include but are not limited to:
Research Work Responsibilities (40%)
- Under the direction of the Research Director and in partnership with other members of the Research Team, develop a manageable set of research projects.
- Collaborate on research design, data collection, analysis, and dissemination of research findings.
- Under the direction of the Research Director and in partnership with other Initiative staff, draft and publish research on critical land and housing issues impacting disadvantaged communities, especially with respect to issues that have been insufficiently analyzed to date. Such research will be published in the form of manuscripts, papers, book chapters, briefs, blog posts, etc.
- Participate in the creation of research reports and presentations.
Strategy & Planning Responsibilities (30%)
- Help refine and implement a 3-year research program agenda which includes helping identify new research opportunities, develop robust research designs, and disseminate research findings.
- Help monitor the progress of the research program agenda and report to Initiative leadership regularly.
- Conduct independent research on relevant topics and on relevant stakeholders to enable the leadership team to decide whether to pursue certain potential research projects.
- Advise the Research Director and other members of the Initiative’s leadership team about how the Initiative can provide thought leadership on various housing, land, and other real property matters.
- Support the Initiative’s sponsorship of research-related convenings on an annual basis, including the Initiative’s signature annual national conferences (developed collectively by Initiative staff).
- Help identify and cultivate partnerships with other organizations and researchers that work on research on housing, land, other real property, and community development matters.
Administrative Responsibilities (30%)
- Assist in securing financial resources to support the research program and in reporting the progress of the research program to existing funders.
- Help coordinate research team projects, including those that involve close collaboration with the policy team.
- Participate in and manage coalition(s) as the research program works with a complex and diverse group of stakeholders in producing increased research activity on understudied issues.
- Assist with research program convenings, including content and agenda setting, logistics, and coordination.
Full-Time Equivalent Hiring Range: $60,700 to $75,850; salary commensurate with relevant experience.
Requirements
Education:
- A law degree (J.D.), master’s degree, or another relevant graduate or advanced professional degree required.
Experience:
- 1-2 years of related experience.
Basic qualifications and skills:
- Strong interpersonal, communications, writing, and public speaking skills.
- Critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to manage multiple simultaneous projects and deadlines.
- Academic or work experience in the areas of rural or urban policy, affordable housing, heirs’ property, land use, land conservation and stewardship, economic justice, civil rights, or another related area.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience working with large administrative data sets and knowledge of statistical software (SAS, STATA, R, or Python).
- Knowledge and experience with ArcGIS.
- Experience with information collection, analysis, and dissemination, including written and oral presentation of research projects.
- Experience working with or on behalf of disadvantaged communities or individuals or relevant lived experience.
- Project management and coordination experience.
Closing Statement
Boston College offers a broad and competitive range of benefits depending on your job classification eligibility:
- Tuition remission for Employees.
- Tuition remission for Spouses and Children who meet eligibility requirements.
- Generous Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance.
- Low-Cost Life Insurance.
- Eligibility for both University-Funded 401k and Employer-Sponsored 403b Retirement Plans.
- Paid Holidays Annually.
- Generous Sick and Vacation Pay.
- Additional benefits can be found on https://www.bc.edu/employeehandbook.
Boston College conducts pre-employment background checks as part of the hiring process.
Boston College is an equal opportunity employer. In concert with our Jesuit, Catholic mission, Boston College is dedicated to the goal of building a culturally diverse and pluralistic faculty and staff committed to teaching and working in a multicultural environment and strongly encourages applications for women, minorities, individuals with disabilities, and covered veterans. To learn more about how BC supports diversity and inclusion throughout the university please visit the Office for Institutional Diversity at https://www.bc.edu/diversity.
Boston College's Notice of Nondiscrimination can be viewed at https://www.bc.edu/nondiscrimination.
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