ABE Site Coordinator / Laboratory Technician
ORGANIZATION SUMMARY
For more than two decades, LA Promise Fund has uplifted schools, students and families in South LA to ensure more Black and Latinx students are prepared for success in college, career, and life. Today, we accomplish this goal as an education management organization that runs two South LA charter schools and coordinating high impact educational enrichment programming to ensure students are college and career bound. LA Promise Charter Middle and High Schools advance a college-prep culture and integrated digital media arts-themed education, with significant parent engagement, socio-emotional supports, and leadership development.
Simultaneously, LA Promise Fund works with schools County-wide to offer a portfolio of programs that foster motivated, engaged, and directed students poised for academic, professional, and personal success. Currently, these regional programs include a focus on female empowerment, STEM, media arts, college readiness, career exposure and work-based-learning, school improvement design, and parent engagement. We work alongside a network of essential partners, students, parents, teachers, and school leaders to build strong schools that increase educational equity within South LA and beyond. To learn more about LA Promise Fund visit www.lapromisefund.org.
POSITION SUMMARY
Amgen Biotech Experience Los Angeles (ABE-LA), funded by the Amgen Foundation, is an innovative science education program that provides teacher professional development, teaching materials, and research-grade equipment and supplies to secondary schools free of charge. It features a hands-on molecular biology curriculum that introduces students to the excitement of scientific discovery through cutting edge in-person and online lab experiences.
The Site Coordinator is the primary staff person at an ABE distribution center, having responsibility for daily workings of the program, and is the primary contact for teachers. They work directly with the ABE-LA team, under the supervision of the ABE-LA Site Director, to ensure the desired quality and outcomes are accomplished in a timely and professional manner. The Site Coordinator will manage in person trainings, material development/ distribution, and supports to schools when in-person school resumes. In the meantime, the Site Coordinator will work with the team to ensure robust virtual and online experiences are fully available to students and teachers. This Site Director will have an explicit focus on recruiting urban LA schools and teachers to ensure that traditionally underserved student populations (e.g., African American, Latinx, English Learners and Special Education) have full access to the Amgen Biotech Experience. This is a full-time, exempt position.
RESPONSIBILITIES AND DUTIES
The Site Coordinator will:
- Serve as an ABE-LA representative and primary liaison with teachers and ABE program partners
- Coordinate kit schedules, materials preparation, distribution and equipment maintenance for the South LA distribution center
- Provide technical assistance and professional development for participating teachers
- Train and supervise assistant lab technicians and student interns
- Ensure paperwork and invoices related to services are submitted accurately and in a timely manner
- Provide support and assist with the planning and implementation of the ABE-LA teacher training workshops and other ABE-LA events
- Present at training workshops and ABE-LA events as needed
- Provide program expertise and advice to ABE-LA site team
- Use current and emerging technologies and alternative delivery methods to enhance student learning and teacher professional development
- Develop training materials and facilitate professional development sessions on implementing the ABE and LabXchange curriculum
- Prepare and submit reports in a timely manner
- Have an equity-minded focus, responsiveness, and sensitivity to and understanding of the diverse academic, socioeconomic, cultural, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, and ethnic backgrounds of participating students, including those with physical or learning disabilities as it relates to differences in learning styles; and successfully foster and support an inclusive educational environment
- Prepare appropriate instructional aids to enhance in-person and online learning
- Other duties as assigned
CANDIDATE REQUIREMENTS
Education and Experience
- Minimum Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology, Biology, Biochemistry, Microbiology or a related science field
- Minimum 1 year of experience working in a biology laboratory setting
- Prior teaching experience as a high school teacher or college professor preferred
- Demonstrated proficiency using computer applications, online resources, and other technologies for the classroom preferred
Knowledge, Skills and Abilities
- Mission-driven and able to gather others around them in a common vision of success
- Strong management, interpersonal and communication skills with the ability to work effectively with a wide range of stakeholders in a diverse community
- Articulate, professional demeanor with strong self-confidence and initiative
- Knowledgeable of public education and able to work with and understand the needs of public school teachers
- Knowledge of current teaching methods and educational pedagogy, as well as differentiated instruction based upon student learning styles, preferred
- Ability to communicate effectively with the school community, including administrators, teachers, and students
- Ability to engage in self-evaluation with regard to performance and professional growth
- Reflective of the diversity of our community
- Values intellectual curiosity and innovative teaching
- Cares about student success and collaborates on strategies to facilitate success for under-represented populations
- Demonstrated project management expertise
- Outstanding organizational skills and attention to detail
- Strong collaborator, good listener and strategist
- Comfortable receiving input from many sources, and able to analyze and formulate disparate information into a sound, well-organized plan
- Innovative thinker who can contribute to continuous improvement of protocols, policies and operating procedures
- Flexible and adaptable individual willing to learn new systems and approaches as technology and platforms change
- Self-starter with a knack for networking, creating new relationships and opportunities
- Ability to work independently and manage multiple priorities and deadlines
- Fluent computer skills including database, word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, and online communications; Microsoft Office and Google Suite experience preferred
- Able to work with a flexible schedule, as needed the by program, including after-hours and weekends (occasionally)
- Entrepreneurial - a hard worker with a high energy level who excels in an unstructured environment
- Bilingual in Spanish preferred
- Commitment to LA Promise Fund and Amgen Biotech Experience mission and values
- Must clear a LiveScan criminal background check
- Must clear a TB Risk Assessment
- Must complete Mandated Reporter training
COMPENSATION
Salary commensurate with qualifications, experience and education. Excellent, full benefits package.
HOW TO APPLY