Director of University Relations and Student Programs

About the role

State of Location: New York

Position Summary

The Director of University Relations & Student Programs serves as a talent acquisition leader accountable for designing, scaling, and operationalizing Ivy Rehab's national early-career clinical recruitment engine. Reporting directly to the Vice President of Talent Acquisition, this leader bridges academic partnerships and regional clinical operations across 14+ states and multiple clinical brands (adult outpatient PT, pediatric therapy, and specialty clinics).

Primary accountability includes architecting a dedicated campus recruiting function, scaling the student placement program, formalizing clinical rotation conversions, spearheading high-impact university and state association events, and managing recruitment technologies and analytics to consistently build robust talent pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Architect, scale, and institutionalize Ivy Health's end-to-end early-career recruitment framework, transitioning from administrative student placement into a proactive, high-velocity campus recruitment model.
• Partner with Operations and Finance to forecast regional entry-level clinician demand 12 to 24 months out, aligning university pipelining directly with market expansions, acquisitions, and regional backfill priorities.
• Partner with Clinical Excellence and regional operations to treat student clinical affiliations as extended working interviews, operationalizing structured conversion touchpoints to convert clinical rotations into full-time licensed hires.
• Serve as Ivy's primary ambassador to Academic Directors of Clinical Education (ADCEs), Department Chairs, and Deans, securing preferred clinical rotation contracts and embedding Ivy clinical leaders into guest lectures and symposiums.
• Architect and scale a peer-to-peer Student Ambassador initiative across target DPT, OT, and SLP programs, mobilizing student leaders to drive grassroots employer brand awareness.
• Direct Ivy Rehab's annual event strategy and presence across state physical, occupational, speech, and ABA therapy association conferences, student conclaves, and university symposiums.
• Lead high-touch brand activations, booth exhibits, clinical panel sponsorships, and networking mixers designed to maximize student engagement and lead generation
• Direct university engagement events, including 'Ivy Day' campus takeovers, guest clinical lectures, resume/licensing workshops, and Clinical Instructor (CI) appreciation summits.
• Drive alignment across Regional Operations Leaders, Clinical Excellence, and Talent Acquisition Business Partners (TABPs) through regular regional strategy reviews, serving as the subject matter expert on early-career market trends.
• Oversee the configuration and utilization of the CRM, deploying multi-touch nurture drip campaigns.
• Build and present data-backed dashboards tracking conversion funnel health, event ROI, school productivity, and regional hiring velocity.
• Participate in special projects as required
• Perform other duties as assigned

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Human Resources, Healthcare Administration, Business, or related discipline required.
• Minimum of 7 years of progressive talent acquisition, university relations, or early-career program leadership experience.
• 3+ years of direct people management experience with proven capability to lead, develop, and inspire remote/hybrid teams.
• Demonstrated experience recruiting graduate-level clinical talent (PT, OT, SLP, Nursing, or allied health) within a competitive outpatient or health system environment.
• Demonstrated history of budgeting, planning, and executing multi-tier conference booths, state chapter sponsorships, and university recruitment tours.
• Expertise with modern ATS platforms (Jobvite, Greenhouse, or Workday), CRM nurture tools, Handshake, and business intelligence reporting.
• Experience building strong relationships with universities in multiple states
• Willingness to travel 30%-35% during peak academic recruiting and conference seasons.
• Experience in a high growth, fast-paced environment highly preferred
• Ability to proactively assess program successes and opportunities of improvement, and make recommendations on how to highlight or adjust respectively

Pay and benefits

Actual salaries depend on a variety of factors, including experience, specialty, education, and organizational need. Any listed salary range or contractual rate does not include bonuses/incentive, differential pay, or other forms of compensation or benefits.

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