EARTH Digital Platform Coordinator

33224BR

Wonderful Inst fr Sustnbl Engr

Position Overview
EARTH is developing a community-forward
online platform to serve as the primary digital entry point for its public, industry-facing, and access-controlled stakeholder engagement.
The EARTH Community Forum is envisioned as more than a document repository. It will combine public information, member-restricted resources,
curated source materials, discussion spaces, announcements, event follow-up, and user support into a managed digital environment for
industry members, academic partners, students, researchers, advisory groups, and approved external stakeholders. The platform is intended to
support reliable access control, organized content stewardship, member onboarding, and ongoing interaction across EARTH’s research,
workforce development, and technology translation activities.
To address this challenge, a new NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC):
Environmentally Applied Refrigerant Technology Hub (EARTH) is creating a “sustainable refrigerant lifecycle” to address technical,
environmental, and societal challenges facing the HVACR industry. EARTH is a multi-institution, multi-disciplinary team from the University
of Kansas, University of Notre Dame, University of Hawai’i, University of Maryland, University of South Dakota, and Lehigh
University.
This is a 100%, twelve-month, benefits-eligible, regular appointment that reports directly to the ERC EARTH Administrative
Director. Currently, the position is designated as on-campus. Alternative and flexible work schedules will be evaluated as per ERC EARTH
policy and center guidelines. This position should be classified as a mid-level professional staff role requiring operational platform
experience, judgment, and independent execution.
The EARTH Community Forum Administrator is responsible for administering and maintaining
EARTH’s external community platform and associated website content operations. The role requires independent judgment, access-control
discipline, stakeholder-facing communication, platform administration experience, content workflow management, and the ability to coordinate
across academic, industry, public, and administrative functions. The position is operationally autonomous within defined policy boundaries
and supports the growth of the platform into a broader community engagement asset.
 

Job Description
50% Community Platform Administration

• Administer the community forum platform, including user accounts, groups,
  permissions, discussion categories, content areas, notification settings, and platform configuration within delegated
  authority.
• Maintain public, member-restricted, and limited-access areas consistent with approved access policies, membership
  categories, and stakeholder needs.
• Configure and maintain discussion spaces, resource libraries, announcement areas, member-facing
  pages, working group spaces, and other approved platform areas.
• Coordinate with platform vendors, university information technology
  personnel, communications staff, and EARTH leadership to resolve operational issues and support platform enhancements.
• Maintain
  platform housekeeping practices, including archiving obsolete content, reviewing navigation structures, managing outdated pages or
  categories, and escalating issues requiring policy or leadership review.
• Support implementation of platform features such as member
  profiles, announcements, discussion boards, event follow-up spaces, curated content collections, and stakeholder resource
  areas.
• Maintain administrative documentation sufficient to support continuity of platform operations.

20% Website
Administration and Content Operations

• Support and maintain approved EARTH website content as part of the broader community
  forum effort, including public pages, member-facing resources, announcements, events, staff information, industry-facing information, and
  other approved web content.
• Coordinate content intake, review, approval-routing, posting, revision, and retirement workflows for
  website and forum materials.
• Work with EARTH staff and subject matter experts to translate approved source materials into organized,
  accessible, and user-friendly website or forum content.
• Maintain basic content taxonomy, tagging, navigation consistency, version
  awareness, and content lifecycle practices across the forum and website.
• Support consistency between the EARTH website and community
  forum, including cross-linking, resource placement, event follow-up, announcements, and member-facing information.
• Coordinate with
  communications, web support, institutional branding, accessibility, or information technology personnel when website changes exceed the
  position’s delegated authority.
• Identify outdated, duplicative, incomplete, or hard-to-find website and forum content and recommend
  corrective action.
• Support basic web accessibility practices and coordinate with appropriate university personnel when content,
  documents, or platform features raise accessibility concerns.

10% Access Control and User
Administration

• Manage named-user access for approved EARTH industry members, academic partners, staff, students, advisors,
  and invited stakeholders.
• Maintain role-based access control structures aligned with membership status, committee participation,
  working group assignments, content sensitivity, and approved public/private segmentation.
• Coordinate user onboarding and offboarding
  workflows for external users, including new member representatives, departing users, changed company contacts, and time-limited stakeholder
  access.
• Maintain user-access records, membership contact lists, group assignments, access lists, and operational
  documentation.
• Support accurate implementation of membership-tier access, committee access, advisory access, working group access,
  and other approved access categories.
• Monitor access issues and route ambiguous cases to the appropriate EARTH leader, Industry
  Liaison Officer, Innovation Officer, university office, or designated decision-maker.
• Escalate access requests involving
  confidential materials, unpublished research, intellectual property, export-control concerns, membership agreements, or other restricted
  information.

10% Community Operations and Member Support

• Provide front-line operational support to forum
  users, including account access, navigation assistance, content location support, notification settings, posting questions, and routine
  troubleshooting.
• Support forum activity by posting approved prompts, announcements, event follow-up materials, discussion starters,
  resources, and member-facing updates.
• Assist with routine moderation workflows, including monitoring posts, flagging inappropriate
  or misplaced content, routing technical questions, and escalating sensitive issues.
• Support member onboarding and orientation to the
  forum, including preparation of user guides, frequently asked questions, short instructions, and platform-use materials.
• Help ensure
  that the forum remains organized, current, accessible, and useful to industry members, academic partners, students, staff, advisory members,
  and approved stakeholders.
• Identify recurring user needs, content gaps, platform friction points, and operational issues that may
  require process improvement or leadership attention.
• Support the transition from a static content repository model toward a more
  active community platform model.

5% Reporting, Analytics, and Continuous Improvement

• Track and report
  routine forum and website metrics, such as user registrations, active users, discussion activity, content views, member engagement, resource
  use, support requests, and content updates.
• Prepare periodic operational summaries for EARTH leadership and other relevant staff,
  including program reporting requirements.
• Recommend improvements to navigation, access-control workflows, content organization,
  member onboarding, website usability, and platform operations.
• Maintain standard operating procedures, administrative documentation,
  content calendars, access-control procedures, and platform-management records.
• Support future evolution of the forum operating model
  as EARTH’s member community, public-facing resources, and stakeholder engagement needs mature.
• Assist in evaluating whether
  additional platform features, integrations, workflows, or administrative practices are needed.

5% Coordination and
Stakeholder Interface

• Coordinate with the Industry Liaison Officer, Innovation Officer, Research Project Manager, Education
  and Workforce Development Director, communications staff, program management staff, researchers, students, and other EARTH personnel as
  needed.
• Work with industry member representatives and approved stakeholders in a professional, service-oriented
  manner.
• Support cross-functional workflows involving public information, member-restricted information, event follow-up, committee
  support, working group activity, and curated resource collections.
• Maintain appropriate confidentiality and discretion when handling
  member lists, restricted materials, unpublished information, access rights, and operational issues.
• Participate in planning
  discussions related to forum operations, website needs, content governance, platform improvement, and member support.
• Recognize that
  final strategy and policy decisions rest with designated EARTH leadership, while providing effective platform implementation and
  administration of the community forum and related website functions.

Required Qualifications

1. High School
   diploma or GED + 5 years related experience OR Bachelors degree in related field + 1 year of related experience
2. Two or more years of
   professional experience administering or substantially supporting a digital platform, website, online community, member portal, learning
   platform, content management system, customer support portal, association platform, or comparable system.
3. Demonstrated ability to
   manage user accounts, permissions, content areas, workflows, or platform configuration in a structured digital environment, as evidenced by
   application materials.
4. Strong organizational skills and ability to maintain accurate records, lists, documentation, calendars, and
   operating procedures, as evidenced by application materials.
5. Ability to work independently within defined policies and escalate
   issues appropriately.
6. Strong written communication skills and ability to prepare clear user-facing instructions, announcements,
   summaries, and support materials.
7. Demonstrated judgment in handling restricted information, access-control issues, stakeholder
   communications, and operational ambiguity.
8. Ability to work with technical, academic, industry, administrative, and external
   stakeholder audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

1. Degree, coursework, or professional experience in a
   science, technology, engineering, or mathematics field, or demonstrated experience supporting technical, research-intensive, engineering,
   product development, or academic-industry collaboration environments.
2. Three or more years of relevant experience in digital platform
   administration, website administration, community platform operations, member portal administration, or comparable stakeholder-facing
   digital operations.
3. Experience with B2C or B2B community platforms, forum platforms, association platforms, or member engagement
   systems such as Higher Logic Vanilla, Higher Logic Thrive, Invision Community, Discourse, Member365, Hivebrite, or similar
   systems.
4. Experience with website administration or content management systems such as Drupal, WordPress, SharePoint, or comparable
   platforms.
5. Experience supporting public and restricted-access content environments.
6. Experience with role-based access
   control, named-user account management, member onboarding, or external stakeholder access workflows.
7. Experience in a university,
   research center, consortium, association, nonprofit, professional society, technology-transfer, or industry-engagement
   environment.
8. Familiarity with accessibility, web governance, content lifecycle management, information architecture, metadata,
   tagging, or content taxonomy practices.
9. Ability to interpret user feedback, platform analytics, and operational patterns to
   recommend practical improvements.
10. Familiarity with research, innovation, technology commercialization, engineering, energy,
    refrigerants, cooling, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration, or academic-industry partnership
    environments.

Contact Information to Applicants
Emily Weiss, eweiss@ku.edu

Additional
Candidate Instruction
A complete application consists of:

• online application
• cover
  letter
• resume
• three professional references

Only complete applications will be considered. Application review
begins Saturday, August 1, 2026. To ensure consideration, please apply prior to that date. 

Advertised Salary
Range: $52,000 – $68,000

Application Review Begins: 01-Aug-2026

Anticipated Start
Date: 07-Sep-2026

Primary Campus
University of Kansas Lawrence Campus

FTE: 1.0

Reg/Temp: Regular

FLSA Status
Nonexempt

Employee Class: U-Unclassified Professional Staff

Work Schedule
M-F 8-5

Job Family
Public Affairs-KUL

Work Location Assignment
On-Site

Disclaimer
The University of Kansas prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex,
national origin, age, ancestry, disability, status as a veteran, sexual orientation, marital status, parental status, gender identity,
gender expression, and genetic information in the university’s programs and activities. Retaliation is also prohibited by university policy.
The following person has been designated to handle inquiries regarding the nondiscrimination policies and is the Title IX coordinator for
all KU and KUMC campuses: Associate Vice Chancellor for the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX, civilrights@ku.edu, Room 1082, Dole Human
Development Center, 1000 Sunnyside Avenue, Lawrence, KS 66045, 785-864-6414, 711 TTY.

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