In this Featured Gig installment, Quinnipiac University’s Adam Nemeroff answers my 4 questions about his search for a Senior Learning Designer, AI and Emerging Learning Technologies. Adam serves as QU’s Assistant Provost for Innovations in Learning, Teaching, and Technology.
Q1: What is the university’s mandate behind this role? How does it help align with and advance the university’s strategic priorities?
A1: This role comes at a real exciting moment for us. Our senior leadership and Board of Trustees have signaled strong support for investing in what the future of teaching and learning looks like, including the role AI and emerging technologies will play going forward. That gave us the room to build a position that leans into what a senior learning designer, someone with depth and experience, can bring to helping the university teach and learn well in the age of AI.
We’ve already seen strong engagement with our AI programming to date, and this is a chance to build on that momentum with dedicated expertise. This role is a direct extension of Quinnipiac’s Strategic Visioning priorities, particularly “Lead through Innovation,” which calls for ethically designing and integrating emerging technologies throughout the Quinnipiac experience and modernizing how we teach, learn, and operate. It’s a key piece of how we intend to support every school and college as they navigate this changing landscape.
This isn’t a management role. It’s someone doing the work, hands-on, in the room with faculty, but bringing enough depth and experience to help level up everything the rest of the team is doing. We want this person to be a genuine subject matter expert and go-to resource, someone who works closely with our leadership team to help faculty across the institution through this moment of change. Our whole team is already deeply involved in AI work, so this role doesn’t change that so much as it adds capacity at a moment when the timing couldn’t be better. We’re at this interesting point that still feels like the ground floor in a lot of ways, but we’re far enough in that we’re now grappling with the harder, more “wicked” problems: how curricula need to shift, how learning itself is changing and how instructors can keep using this to make their teaching better on an ongoing basis. We want someone who gets genuinely excited about new developments and ideas in this space, but who’s also brave enough to grapple with the harder, more critical questions that come along with it.
Beyond the role itself, I think QU is just an incredible place to work right now. There’s a lot of energy here; it’s a generative environment, and everyone genuinely works as one team.
Q2: Where does the role sit within the university structure? How will the person in this role engage with other units and leaders across campus? Is the role in-person, hybrid or remote-eligible?
A2: Before getting into the structural details, it’s worth saying a bit about what our team is and what we’ve built. QILT (Quinnipiac Innovations in Learning and Teaching) is a fairly new team, built out about two years ago now. We started as a couple of colleagues from legacy units, plus me as a new hire and we've grown into a robust team of seven, soon to be eight with this hire. We sit within the Provost’s office and work across every school at the institution.
I like to think of us as a key node in a larger network. We’re amplifying great work happening elsewhere, connecting people across schools, and doing the kind of work centers for teaching and learning do well on campuses like ours. Some of our learning designers pair up with specific schools, others pair up around a particular project and its needs, but we’re always working together and helping each other out across the team. This role will engage regularly with faculty, academic programs and colleagues across every school, along with partners like ITS, the libraries and accessibility and academic integrity leaders.
As for the work arrangement, this is a hybrid role. We're genuinely invested in that model. We recognize that a hybrid role looks different depending on the specifics and where it sits in the institution, and full remote isn’t something we can offer here, but everyone on the team is in multiple days a week and we also value the flexibility that comes with focused time at home. Given that part of our work is in online learning, it also matters to us that we model that flexibility ourselves.
We also really love being together. Our team has a strong culture, and we genuinely enjoy each other’s company. We cluster our in-office days so we can do team lunches and gatherings and just be around each other. It’s a great team, and honestly, people are sometimes a little jealous they’re not on it. There’s a real energy and passion to who we are and how we work.
Q3: What would success look like in one year? Three years? Beyond?
A3: This is a tricky question to answer cleanly, because I think all of us wish we had a crystal ball for what AI’s impact on education is actually going to look like. That said, we do have some direct outcomes we’re looking for early on, and I see this person plugging right into that work: things like tool pilots, training and professional development for faculty, and supporting the curricular changes that come out of all of it. We have team goals this role maps onto well and, in year one, success looks like this person becoming a real contributor to that work.
We deliberately framed this role around “AI and emerging technologies” rather than just AI, because we know this moment is bigger than any one tool or trend. A few years ago, this same role might have centered on AR, VR, and visualization in learning, all things that are still important and still happening on our campus. We like that this role is built to keep looking toward whatever the next frontier turns out to be, three years out and beyond, rather than being locked to this particular moment.
And honestly, a big part of what success looks like for us is personal, too. I'm hoping whoever takes this role gets into it and genuinely loves it. We care a lot about developing and celebrating our people, and supporting them well on their journey.
Q4: What kinds of future roles would someone who took this position be prepared for?
A4: One of the things that drew me to Quinnipiac in the first place is this innovative, almost startup attitude that runs through the institution, along with the sheer breadth of the work we get to touch. Almost everyone on our team does a bit of everything: the kind of course development work you'd see in a traditional online learning unit, testing and piloting new tools and ideas, and generally bringing an innovative, “What’s next?” mindset to the work. That scout mentality is a big part of what we look for in people, and it’s also what prepares them well for whatever comes next.
On a more personal note, I’ve seen this play out in my own path. There’s a real range of directions a learning designer can grow into from here, and I’m honestly proud to be something of a product of that myself. It’s a nice feeling being a former learning designer now sitting in the Provost’s team meeting. We’re genuinely supportive of that kind of growth and, in a lot of ways, each of us has shaped our own role based on our experience and where our individual journey has taken us. I see that same possibility in this position too. It’s not just about the role as it exists today; it’s also about what someone can build it into, and whatever comes after that. We have a really generative environment for that kind of growth.
