Director of Marketing and Communications

The University of Iowa's College of Pharmacy is home to one of the nation's most distinguished pharmacy programs and to University of Iowa Pharmaceuticals, the largest university-affiliated pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in the United States. As the college enters the next chapter of its 140-year history — modernizing its PharmD curriculum, deepening its research enterprise, expanding student success infrastructure, and launching a new undergraduate degree program — it is building the marketing operation to match its ambitions.

The creation of this position reflects a deliberate shift: from marketing and communications as a support function to a strategic growth driver. The director will be responsible for finding the students whose goals align with what Iowa Pharmacy offers, building awareness in the right pipelines, and making a compelling case across every channel where those students are forming decisions.

This position reports to the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) in the Office of Strategic Communication with a secondary reporting line to the dean of the College of Pharmacy.

What This Role Does
The Director of Marketing and Communications develops and leads the college's marketing and communications strategy with a focus on enrollment growth, program reputation, and audience engagement. As a member of the university's Office of Strategic Communication, the director serves as the college's embedded marketing lead and permanent Program Marketing Owner — the primary point of connection between Pharmacy and specialist resources, including creative, content, web, and enrollment marketing functions.

In the near term, this means working with the CMO to build new capabilities and infrastructure for the college: audience research, positioning and messaging, web strategy, and enrollment marketing — while developing deep subject matter expertise in pharmacy education and its prospective student landscape.

The director also recognizes that Pharmacy operates as a long-term professional community. Alumni, preceptors, faculty, and current students are reputation audiences whose engagement reinforces the college's market position — and the director provides strategic direction for how the college communicates with and stewards those relationships.

Over time, the role shifts from building to leading: Owning the college's brand positioning, enrollment marketing channels, and day-to-day coordination of OSC resources in service of Pharmacy's goals.

Where This Role Sits
The Director of Marketing and Communications reports centrally to the university's Chief Marketing Officer and operates within the college as a member of Pharmacy's leadership team. In practice, this means serving as a trusted advisor to the dean on marketing and communication, bringing a university-wide perspective into college-level decisions, and ensuring the college's voice and priorities are reflected in broader institutional strategy. For the right candidate, this structure offers both the resources and platform of a university-wide marketing operation and the relationships and influence of college leadership.

What We're Looking For
The ideal candidate brings marketing competence and organizational savvy in equal measure. They understand how growth marketing works and know how to operate in environments where relationships and buy-in matter as much as technical skill.

The college's communication history is broad, encompassing alumni engagement, donor stewardship, and leadership communications alongside marketing. The director will work with college leadership to focus the marketing operation on its highest-value work while ensuring other communication functions are appropriately resourced. This requires a leader who can define scope, make a credible case for it to stakeholders, and maintain a sharp focus on outcomes even as competing priorities accumulate.

Experience in higher education is useful but not required. This role is well-suited to candidates from enrollment marketing, agency environments, or growth-focused marketing roles in complex organizations — anyone who can learn a new environment quickly and apply marketing fundamentals with both rigor and pragmatism.

Key Areas of Responsibilities

Marketing Plan

• Lead the development of an annual marketing plan aligned with collegiate enrollment goals, program priorities, and available resources.
• Collaborate with the CMO to build and deploy marketing infrastructure: audience segmentation, web strategy, paid media, email marketing, and marketing automation.

Message Development and Implementation

• Lead the development of audience-specific messaging frameworks for prospective students, current students, faculty, alumni, and external partners, guiding how the college communicates across all channels and functions.
• Provide strategic direction for alumni, donor, and leadership communications, ensuring alignment with brand positioning and enrollment goals, with execution shared across the team and in coordination with advancement partners.

Project Management

• Develop and maintain a marketing calendar that sequences initiatives, manages dependencies, and aligns with enrollment and academic cycles.
• Establish processes for intake, prioritization, and capacity management that protect the team's focus on strategic marketing work.

Financial Responsibility

• Develop and manage the annual marketing budget in coordination with college leadership and OSC.
• Allocate resources across channels and initiatives based on audience data, performance history, and enrollment priorities.

Supervision and Leadership

• Provide functional and administrative supervision of college marcom staff across marketing, communications, and constituent engagement functions, including hiring, performance management, and professional development.
• Build a team culture grounded in marketing accountability, creative excellence, and data-informed decision-making.

To obtain the full job description including key areas of responsibility, technical competencies, and desirable qualifications, please contact Libby Kleppe at libby-kleppe@uiowa.edu.