Assistant Director, Planetarium

About Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University:  

At Embry-Riddle, we take pride in our position as the world’s largest and most comprehensive university dedicated to aviation and aerospace. Located in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Prescott, Arizona, our esteemed residential campuses offer a prestigious educational experience. However, our commitment to education knows no borders as our Worldwide campus expands our reach globally, providing a world-class education online and at approximately 110 locations across the United States, Asia, Europe, and Central and South America. This breadth of reach ensures that students can access our exceptional programs without geographical limitations. 

With a history spanning nearly a century, we have continually adapted to the dynamic needs of the industries we support. In the Academic Year 2022-23, we welcomed over 11,100 students to our residential campuses and over 19,000 students at our worldwide campus.  

Join our global community and embark on a journey of academic excellence and limitless possibilities. Employees working more than 30 hours a week can enjoy medical, dental and vision benefits, an amazing retirement plan with immediate vesting that includes a 6% gift and up to 4% match, free tuition for employees and their immediate family members, and a generous personal leave program. To find out more about our benefits and why ERAU has been named a “Great College to Work For” for 13 consecutive years, visit our careers page .     

The Opportunity:  

We are searching for an Assistant Director for our state-of-the-art planetarium. The planetarium provides immersive STEM experiences for ERAU degree programs, K-12 groups, and the public, adding to the first-class Embry-Riddle educational experience, while spreading inspirational science and the university’s quality reputation far and wide. The Assistant Director will work with the Planetarium Director to ensure smooth, day-to-day operation of the facility in service of its large and growing variety of clientele.

Duties and responsibilities include:

• Training and supervising student planetarium assistants, ensuring the planetarium’s level of service to large and varied audiences is maintained, while providing opportunities for experience and growth for the planetarium’s student workers in informal STEM education, planetarium presentation, and production.
• Cultivating a niche technological planetarium know-how combined with a commanding capability in the informal educational sphere in order to create and present immersive, high-quality STEM programs to audiences in our Digistar 6 47’ 4K Campus Planetarium and our Mobile StarLab Planetarium.
• Interfacing with many ERAU departments, public partners, and other vested groups to maintain and implement the planetarium’s monthly and seasonal schedule.
• Gaining a strong, broad understanding of the different technical and operational working parts of the planetarium, so as to be able to expertly implement run-of-shows, while overseeing teams of workers during the many different types of events that take place within the dome.
• Managing the various response flows related to the planetarium’s customer service inquiries having to do with public or educational programming, online ticketing functionality, and more.
• Other duties as assigned.

Position start date – July 1, 2024

Qualifications

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in STEM field or Education
• 1-3 years’ experience in informal education related to physical sciences, life sciences, space sciences, engineering and/or technology. 
• Must have excellent interpersonal and communication skills; ability for public speaking to students (grade school through college) and general public.

Preferred:

• Prior experience with the Digistar 6 or other planetarium system