Kyle Gooderham

Job Category: M&P – AAPS
Job Profile: AAPS Salaried – Information Systems and Technology, Level C
Compensation Range: $5,906.25 – $8,508.42 CAD Monthly

The Compensation Range is the span between the minimum and maximum base salary for a position. The midpoint of the range is approximately halfway between the minimum and the maximum and represents an employee that possesses full job knowledge, qualifications and experience for the position. In the normal course, employees will be hired, transferred or promoted between the minimum and midpoint of the salary range for a job.

Posting End Date: August 28, 2023

Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the day prior to the Posting End Date above.

This position is eligible for hybrid work, although regular on-campus days are required.

At UBC, we believe that attracting and sustaining a diverse workforce is key to the successful pursuit of excellence in research, innovation, and learning for all faculty, staff and students. Our commitment to employment equity helps achieve inclusion and fairness, brings rich diversity to UBC as a workplace, and creates the necessary conditions for a rewarding career.

Job Description Summary
Responsible for the development, planning, implementation and maintenance of the department s research-focused technological services including computer, web, and audio-visual services. Responsible for the overall direction of the department s computing services which includes collaboration with UBC IT and Arts ISIT. Works with and provides supplementary support to the IT Helpdesk.

Organizational Status
Reports to the Director, Administration and interacts with faculty, staff, and students, as well as various committees. Advises on design, and plans the implementation of new technological solutions for the delivery of research results. Identifies and establishes relationships with partnered departments, research facilities, and external vendors.

The Department of Psychology is a large department within the Faculty of Arts. In addition to 14 administrative staff, we have over 50 faculty members actively pursuing research. Approximately 120 graduate students, 250 student researchers and 30 research staff work in these labs that are located in multiple sites across campus.

Work Performed

Specific Duties

• Develops, plans, implements, and maintains policies and procedures for the use of technology to improve the delivery of research and administrative activities.
• Analyzes requirements of users, determines project timelines, outlines workflows, reviews progress, and determines operational priorities.
• Supports physical and virtual servers. Provides technical leadership on purchasing, implementation, maintenance and repair.
• Provides technical leadership on data governance, backup, and maintenance. Responsible for approximately 500TB of research data.
• Interfaces with Compute Canada and other external groups to assist our researchers in accessing and using their services.
• Manages the IT infrastructure including the purchase and maintenance of university computer equipment and servers for both hardware and software.
•  Develops internal and inter-departmental software solutions for multiple operating system platforms including Windows, MacOSX, and Linux.
• Negotiates, reviews, and delegates work to various contractors for both internal and external departmental initiatives including IT delivery services and media services.
• Provides overall research computing support to the Department of Psychology which is distributed across 6 buildings.
• Provides client documentation and training based on internal operating procedures and workflows.
• Develops, plans, manages, and modifies the Department of Psychology information technology related security policies to ensure both systems and staff are compliant with regulatory requirements and guidelines set by the University of British Columbia and Province of British Columbia.
• Stays current with web, data center, operation, and end user technology and industry developments. Maintains up-to-date knowledge of current information technology technologies and tools.
• Purchase, deploy, repair, repurpose, and retire department computing devices. Interface with vendors providing hardware purchasing and support.
• Support a wide variety of research specific software for Linux, MacOSX, and Windows operating systems. Some of the software and/or packages are very unique and niche to a particular research focus.
• Designs, develops, and implements both internal IT and end user technical documentation. This encompasses both systems documentation, end user tutorials and training manuals.
• Responsible for the development, planning, and delivery of projects and initiatives to support and create complex web applications for research.
• Coordinate and monitor the status of research-specific web applications. Analyze testing requirements and conducts functional and quality testing.
•  Investigate bug reports, determine their priority and validity, and communicate relevant information. This includes numerous internal and external facing web applications.

Core Duties

• Researches and evaluates vendor supplied applications, develops recommendations, and implements accordingly.
• Analyzes and reviews existing or proposed system features and integration, security, scalability and performance requirements with clients, business analysts, and team members.
• Manages production and non-production application environments.
• Maintains core application infrastructure, including virtual servers, networks and firewalls.
• Plans and performs global configuration changes or module deployments for enterprise or complex applications.
• Integrates vendor supplied applications with existing infrastructure and applications through custom interfaces and components.
• Manages small to medium sized projects and related budgets.
• Provides technical expertise, training, and consultation to other staff.
• Develops or modifies software code to meet specifications or facilitate integration.
• Conducts testing of new or customized application modules to ensure application meets specifications.
• Develops application documentation requirements for functions, modifications, back-ups and operating procedures. Provides ongoing maintenance and operational support for applications.
• Supports application lifecycle and applies and follows appropriate change management methodologies and best practices.
• Maintains appropriate professional designations and up-to-date knowledge of current information technology techniques and tools and provides input to strategies for ongoing support and upgrade of these systems.
• Builds and maintains good working relationships and collaborates with others to achieve client objectives.
  Performs other related duties as required.
  

Consequence of Error/Judgement
Decisions regarding the allocation of operational and research resources must be made with a thorough understanding and insight into the current developments and future trends that occur in the areas of computing services, audio/visual services, web development, and data center operations. Errors in judgement in these areas would severely limit our ability to compete for research funding and provide shared services with other research facilities and collaborators. Failure to effectively manage these areas of would severely impair the data to day teaching, administrative, and research functions of the Department of Psychology.

Supervision Received
The position will work independently. Position reports to the Director, Administration.

Supervision Given
Supervises, hires, trains and evaluates the performance of student employees. Negotiates and reviews services provided by internal and external contractors. Coordinates overall continuity and compatibility of the Department of Psychology IT services with a supported community of faculty, graduates, and staff.

Minimum Qualifications

Undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline. Minimum of three years of related experience, or the equivalent combination of education and experience.

• Willingness to respect diverse perspectives, including perspectives in conflict with one’s own.
• Demonstrates a commitment to enhancing one’s own awareness, knowledge, and skills related to equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Preferred Qualifications
University degree in Computer Science with relevant training or significant experience in the appropriate computer systems and applications, or a technical diploma in computer related discipline. 5 years of experience, in-depth knowledge of applications and the business requirements supporting them or the equivalent combination of education and experience. Supervisory, budgetary, presentation, interpersonal, written and oral communication skills. Ability to exercise sound judgment. Demonstrated project management, analytical and problem solving skills. Ability to work independently, under pressure and handle multiple tasks. UBC experience. Knowledge of, and experience supporting Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Microsoft Windows 2008/2012 Server, virtualization using KVM/LibVirt/VMWare, Research Platforms, Data Acquisition Software, Network Stack, Complex Storage Systems, PHP/MySQL, Linux Programming & Scripting Languages (Python, Perl, Bash, Java, Matlab,etc). Knowledge of, and experience supporting research hardware such as eye tracking equipment, EEG systems, cameras, and DAQ systems.Ability to provide quality service to customers in a courteous, patient manner.

Core Competencies

Collaboration (Intermediate – I):
Actively solicits ideas and opinions from others to efficiently and effectively accomplish specific objectives targeted at defined business outcomes. Openly encourages other team members to voice their ideas and concerns. Shows respect for differences and diversity, and disagrees without personalizing issues. Utilizes strengths of team members to achieve optimal performance.

Communicating for Results (Intermediate – I):
Conducts discussions with and writes memoranda to all levels of colleagues and peer groups in ways that support troubleshooting and problem solving. Seeks and shares relevant information, opinions, and judgments. Handles conflict empathetically. Explains the context of interrelated situations, asks probing questions, and solicits multiple sources of advice prior to taking action when appropriate.

Problem Solving (Intermediate – I):
Applies problem-solving methodologies and tools to diagnose and solve operational and interpersonal problems. Determines the potential causes of the problem and devise testing methodologies for validation. Shows empathy and objectivity toward individuals involved in the issue. Analyzes multiple alternatives, risks, and benefits for a range of potential solutions. Recommends resource requirements and collaborates with impacted stakeholders.

Role Based Competencies

Accountability (Intermediate – I):
Sets objectives that meet organizational needs. Provides recommendations to individuals and teams on ways to improve performance and meet defined objectives. Monitors and provides feedback on individual and team performance against defined standards.

Business Process Knowledge (Intermediate – I):
Maps full business processes and designs operational process flow. Facilitates group input and drafts proposals for process improvements. Identifies resource implications. Implements process improvement recommendations within the context of overall business processes.

Information Systems Knowledge (Intermediate – I):
Resolves escalated problems of technical support. Identifies root causes. Sets up and integrates new and enhanced information systems. Identifies customer needs and determines the appropriate approach to apply and ensure resolution. Solicits the input of appropriate technical experts and managers as required. Ability to work effectively independently and in a team environment.

Psychology undergraduate students,

UBC psychology faculty would like your feedback on a new course that is currently under development by the Psychology Curriculum Committee. Research and lab experience is a key component of an undergraduate student’s experience in psychology at UBC — and a pre-requisite for graduate school in the field. Each year, psychology labs have hundreds of students volunteering their time, doing research alongside faculty, graduate students, and post-docs. At the same time, many students who are unable to volunteer as research assistants, whether for personal or financial reasons, are excluded from a key experience in their psychology education at UBC.

The Department of Psychology is hoping to address this gap in several ways. Today, we are asking for your feedback on a proposed second-year research experience course that would allow students to join a psychology lab for course credit. This course and its structure is still being developed, and there are many details that are still not finalized, but as things stand students who have completed either PSYC 101 or 102 would be eligible to join (no GPA minimums or additional pre-reqs would be required) by submitting a form on a website that would indicate which labs are recruiting for the course.

Students would indicate their interest in 3-4 of the labs and then be matched to them. Then the student and the lab would agree on the number of hours per week, which would then translate to credits (in a ratio of 4-5h/week for each 1 credit). Students could flexibly choose the number of credits/hours they would do in up to two semesters. The course would also require students to write short monthly reflection journals. We are hoping to make it a pass/fail course, rather than graded on a scale.

Although we understand that you may have many questions about the fine print details of how the course would work, for now we are hoping for a more general sense of whether a course like this would be something students are interested in general, and we will use your feedback to further tailor the specifics of the course afterwards.

Here is the link to a short, 2-3 minute course survey on this proposed course: https://tinyurl.com/2bt3bwxf

We would like many undergrad psychology majors to share their feedback, whether they are interested in this course or not, and even if you are in your third- or fourth-year (in this case, you would be asked to indicate whether a course like this would have been valuable in your Psychology Major had it been offered when you were in second year). This will help us understand: (a) the general interest in a course like this; (b) the barriers students typically experience when asked to volunteer their time; and (c) potential barriers students feel might prevent them from taking a course like the one we are proposing.

We hope to hear from you and we thank you for your participation in the survey!