Our campus is creating momentum in supporting new avenues of interdisciplinary research and scholarship. We seek faculty who can work within and across multiple disciplines to address complex, pressing contemporary cultural issues.
To instantiate our values of Access, Equity, and Diversity, the UNCW College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) is embarking on our third year of a thematic cohort initiative. This year, our focus is in the areas of Environmental and Social Justice, prioritizing analytics and approaches that center examinations of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, disability, democracy and citizenship, and Indigenous or otherwise decolonizing methodologies. We are actively building a network of researchers, scholars, and artists that will support the ongoing work in which we are engaged and to set a path forward as we grow these areas of critical study into regional and national strengths. This initiative is part of a larger set of coordinated diversity and inclusion initiatives within the UNCW Division of Academic Affairs.
To this latter point, this hiring initiative is aligned with several strategic priorities at UNCW, including efforts to attract and retain high-quality, diverse students, faculty and staff; ensure an inclusive campus culture and a global mindset; enhance applied learning; advance research and scholarly activities; organize and capitalize on key partnerships, campus strengths and employee interests to increase community, regional and global impact and enrich the student experience; and incentivize, support, recognize and reward community/scholarly engagement activities by students, faculty and staff.
Faculty hired as part of this initiative will serve within existing departments/programs connected to their specific discipline and will also form a cohort of scholars to contribute to our interdisciplinary minors as well as to be an integral part of supporting our planned interdisciplinary Bachelor’s degree in Africana Studies. Given our commitment to community engagement and engaged scholarship, we seek to appoint faculty who are deeply imbedded in the communities they study and in developing the next generation of scholars who will be prepared to conduct collaborative research with local and regional communities to address exigent issues.
The College of Arts and Sciences will be searching in the following areas in 2022-2023 for appointments commencing in the 2023-2024 academic year:
Anthropology: Assistant Professor-Biological Anthropology
Computer Science: Assistant Professor-Cyber Security, Assistant Professor-Intelligent Systems Engineering, Lecturer- Computer Science
Earth and Ocean Sciences: Assistant Professor-Hydrogeology
Sociology/Criminology: Assistant Professor-Sociology, Assistant Professor-Sociology
World Languages and Cultures: Assistant Professor-Spanish and Education/Coordinator of World Language Teacher Education, Heritage Language Learning Specialist
As this is a multi-year initiative, other hires may be added for this and future hiring cycles.
Through hiring in this cohort, CAS intends to foster a strong sense of community, mutual support, and mentorship that will aid in the development and retention of all current and future UNCW faculty. By encouraging a strong cohort of faculty to engage across the CAS as well as across all UNCW colleges and schools, all faculty, staff, and students will benefit from and be made better by our commitment to access, equity, and diversity.