Community Engagement/Policy Research GA

This position offers graduate students applied experience spanning policy research and institutional coordination for a regional public university's community engagement infrastructure. Duties will be split roughly evenly between two tracks, and the successful candidate should expect to move between them within the same week: (1) coordination support for the Community Engagement Coordination Council, including maintaining the partnership database and shared calendar, drafting meeting materials, and tracking metrics toward HLC and Carnegie reporting requirements; and (2) research support for CPRCE's applied economic studies, including compiling and cleaning data from public and administrative sources, assisting with IMPLAN model inputs, and preparing figures and summary tables for reports to community and institutional partners.

By the end of the appointment, successful graduate assistants will be able to:

• identify and critically evaluate existing policy research on issues affecting central Minnesota;
• perform basic quantitative data preparation and support economic impact modeling using industry-standard software (IMPLAN);
• manage a coordination workflow across multiple university units and external stakeholders, including database and calendar maintenance and meeting logistics;
• develop research communication skills, including clear technical writing and presentation to non-specialist audiences.

Experience in a role combining quantitative or data work with stakeholder-facing coordination (e.g., a research assistantship alongside committee or organizational leadership) is preferred over experience in either alone. Candidates should be comfortable with spreadsheet-based data work (Excel required; exposure to R, Python, or GIS software a plus) and should have some prior experience in a role requiring sustained coordination across several stakeholders — student organization leadership, committee work, or similar.