Co-Curricular Programmes Manager

Job Summary

The Co-Curricular Programmes Manager provides strategic direction, financial oversight, and operational execution for ALU Rwanda's non-academic and co-curricular portfolios. Core daily responsibilities include directing student success, writing, and career service hubs; managing bridging programs like the LC Bootcamp; building robust corporate partnership channels for internship and postgraduate pipelines; engineering financially sustainable program pricing and delivery models; and leading diverse, cross-functional student support teams.

Foundational Capabilities & Prerequisites

• Academic Preparation: A Master’s degree in Education, Higher Education Administration, Leadership, Human Resource Development, or a related field (or equivalent professional experience).
• Professional Footprint: A minimum of 5+ years of verified leadership experience steering higher education program management networks, career accelerators, student success tracks, or multi-layered co-curricular departments.
• Scaling Mastery: Proven capability designing, rolling out, and managing highly interactive, student-facing development programs at scale.
• Career Pipeline Intuition: Deep, functional understanding of contemporary career readiness frameworks, corporate internship pipelines, university placement mechanics, and postgraduate scholarship architectures.
• Financial & Analytical Literacy: Direct experience developing project budgets, managing operational costs, tracking student data, and driving financially self-sustaining program models.
• Leadership & Interpersonal Synergy: Exceptional people leadership capacity with a history of developing cross-functional teams and building partnerships with external executives, global employers, and internal academic directors.

Core Competencies

• Student-Centered, Outcome-Focused Drive: Unyielding commitment to optimizing student career readiness and learning outcomes.
• Systems & Operational Thinking: Mastery in creating clean planning cycles, automated trackers, and explicit team accountability guidelines.
• Strategic Execution: Exceptional skill in organizing resource deployment within high-velocity, start-up environments.

Program & Systems Architecture

In this agile higher education ecosystem, your administrative pipeline maps directly to the student development lifecycle:

• Academic Integration: Syncing student support models directly with core academic courses to reinforce peer-to-peer logic blocks and writing style guidelines.
• Bridging Engineering: Directing foundational onboarding bootcamps and language immersion systems to optimize incoming student readiness.
• Enterprise Employment Pipelines: Scaling strategic relations with pan-African corporate networks to guarantee a continuous flow of internships.
• Financial Sustainability Arrays: Partnering with finance teams to structure resource deployment, evaluate cost-per-student inputs, and optimize delivery channels.

Key Responsibilities

1. Strategic Leadership of Co-Curricular Portfolios

• Provide operational leadership for ALU Rwanda’s co-curricular initiatives, covering the Writing Centre, Student Success, Career Services, Competitions, Ethics Courses, and Postgraduate Support networks.
• Build strict performance metrics, service level parameters, and clear success goals across all managed functional units.
• Integrate non-academic programs smoothly into the core curriculum, ensuring a cohesive, end-to-end student lifecycle experience.

2. Oversight of Onboarding & Bridging Programs

• Lead the design, iteration, and continuous improvement of non-academic bridging programs, including the Leadership Core (LC) Bootcamp and intensive English Immersion tracks.
• Collaborate with admissions pipelines and academic chairs to align intake benchmarks with student readiness goals.
• Evaluate international educational metrics and regional employer needs to expand or refine bridging tracks continuously.

3. Career Pathways & Global Placement Engineering

• Architect and manage a structured annual pipeline of high-quality internship placements and post-graduation opportunities for ALU Rwanda students.
• Formulate and maintain high-value relationships with corporate employers, international universities, foundations, and scholarship boards.
• Use data tracking tools to evaluate student placement rates, analyze skill gaps, and continually update career preparation programs.

4. Financial Sustainability & Scalable Innovation

• Manage budgets, forecasts, and cost optimization workflows, ensuring co-curricular portfolios contribute to ALU Rwanda's long-term financial health.
• Support enrollment strategies, delivery platforms, and programmatic pricing structures that balance access with operational sustainability.
• Build partnerships and scalable program innovations that lower overhead while maximizing student learning returns.

5. Operational Systems & Team Development

• Establish robust operational frameworks, planning timelines, and transparent data reporting mechanisms for all managed co-curricular functions.
• Manage, mentor, and upskill a diverse team of student success professionals, career advisors, and operational specialists.
• Foster a culture of extreme ownership, service excellence, and iterative testing across all teams, freeing the Director of Academics to focus on high-level strategy.

Skills Required:

• Education / Teaching / Training
• Hr / Public / Admin