Advice for Ombuds Job Seekers

HigherEdJobs, the jobs and career site for academia, has published an informational article about the Ombuds profession.  The piece includes quotes from Bruce J. MacAllister, an IOA Board member and Ombuds with the International Foundation for Online Responsibility; Leah P. Hollis, an Assistant Professor at Morgan State University and author of a recent article in the Journal of IOA; and this blogger, Tom Kosakowski, an Ombuds at UCLA.

Here's a excerpt:

There is currently no single established career or educational path to becoming an ombuds. Most frequently, ombudsing represents an unexpected turn in a related career path, such as law, mediation, academic administration or human resources. IOA offers a Certified Organizational Ombuds Practitioner (CO-OP) certification and also offers trainings for those interested in the Ombuds field.

Past IOA President Tom Kosakowski, who is associate director and ombudsperson for the Center for Health Science at UCLA, attempts to maintain a comprehensive list of colleges and university ombuds programs on The Ombuds Blog, which he's been publishing for ten years. The site also carries announcements of job openings, career transitions, and news that affects the profession.

Kosakowski and MacAllister both see slow but steady growth in the number of campus ombuds positions in the near future. Although ombuds are most common at large research institutions, regional colleges and universities and community colleges have begun instituting programs, too.

(HigherEdJobs.)