Assistant Director - Communications & Engagement

Position Title: Assistant Director - Communications & Engagement

Level: L3 - Specialist / Governance Communication Function

Certification: DPC-1 within 6 months of appointment

Role Purpose

The Assistant Director Communications & Engagement operationalises the DSA&A Communication & Engagement Charter. The role ensures that standing communications to students, parents, staff, governance stakeholders and media are drafted, coordinated, tracked, documented and escalated. This is a governance communication and stakeholder-engagement role - not a KPI analytics or NAAC research role.

Key Responsibilities

• Draft first versions of standing communications: semester welcome messages, year-end student communication, Phase I milestone updates, post-P0 communications, parent welfare reports, new intake parent welcome and monthly staff updates.

• Coordinate the monthly Student Leadership Council meeting, including agenda, attendance, preparation notes and minutes on USADP within 5 days.

• Publish, promote and coordinate open-door student hours with minimum 48 hours advance notice and track follow-up actions.

• Monitor social media daily for student welfare or safety concerns mentioning CU; escalate viral welfare/safety concerns within 2 hours.

• Track all 18 COM communication commitments and produce a monthly communication compliance dashboard.

• Coordinate routine media queries, routing, holding statements and timelines in liaison with the university communications team.

• Document every standing communication as NAAC Criterion V evidence with date, audience, format and content summary in the USADP repository.

• Draft narrative sections of the DSA&A Annual Report using data supplied by CSMC.

Eligibility, Professional Degree and Specific Technical QRs

Experience:

Minimum 5 years experience in institutional communications, student affairs coordination, stakeholder engagement, public relations, higher education communications or equivalent.

Professional Degree:

Postgraduate degree in Mass Communication, Journalism, Public Relations, English, Education Management, Liberal Arts, Management or equivalent. MBA / PG Diploma in Communication or PR desirable.

Specific Technical Skills - Must Have:

Official drafting; governance communication; minutes writing; agenda notes; action-taken reports; stakeholder mapping; communication calendars; communication SLA tracking; compliance dashboards; escalation matrices; social-media monitoring logs; holding statements; evidence documentation; repository filing.

Specific Technical Skills - Desirable:

MS Word, PowerPoint and Excel trackers; Google Workspace; Canva/basic design coordination; content scheduling tools; social media platform monitoring; document repositories; basic analytics of reach/sentiment where available.

Output Standard:

Must distinguish PR language from governance communication: honest before positive, accurate before polished, evidence-backed before promotional.

Interview Assessment:

Candidate should be tested on drafting one student/parent communication, converting meeting notes into minutes and action tracker, and preparing an escalation log from a social-media welfare scenario.