Working Title: Assistant Professor, Department of Engineering (Three Positions)

State Role Title: N/A

Position Type: Instructional / Teaching Faculty

Position Status: Full-Time

College/Division: College of Integrated Science and Engineering

Department: 100590 - Department of Engineering

Pay Rate: Commensurate with Experience

Specify Range or Amount:

Is this a JMU only position? No

Is this a grant-funded position? No

Is this a Conflict of Interest designated position? No

Beginning Review Date: 11/04/2024

About JMU:

Mission
We are a community committed to preparing students to be educated and enlightened citizens who lead productive and meaningful lives.

Vision
To be the national model for the engaged university: engaged with ideas and the world.

Who We Are
Located in the heart of Virginia’s beautiful Shenandoah Valley, the city of Harrisonburg is approximately 120 miles from Washington, D.C. and Richmond, VA. With a population of just over 53,000, Harrisonburg is one of the most diverse communities in the Commonwealth of Virginia. JMU is a selective, public institution with a growing national reputation for offering experiences that lead to an outstanding education and inclusive environment for students, faculty and staff. The student body includes approximately 20,000 undergraduate and 1,900 graduate students, with over 1,000 full-time instructional faculty.

JMU offers thriving programs in the liberal arts, science and technology, and professional disciplines at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels. The university is committed to expanding diversity, fostering equity and inclusion, and supporting superlative teaching and scholarship. JMU has achieved national recognition for the high quality of its academic programs, focus on maintaining strong student/faculty interaction, and innovative faculty research.

General Information:

The Department of Engineering at James Madison University (JMU) invites applicants to join our community and support our project-intensive undergraduate engineering curriculum. We are seeking to hire three tenure-track Assistant Professor positions to start in August 2025.

The JMU Department of Engineering is a community of diverse educators who support each other in achieving broad successes in teaching, scholarship, and service. The department offers an ABET-accredited BS degree in engineering with new concentrations in civil and environmental, geo-environmental, and electromechanical systems. Anchored in the liberal arts through the university’s general education program, JMU’s engineering major is characterized by experiential learning of engineering in team-based settings, and the major culminates in a two-year-long engineering project experience.

The department currently has eleven tenured or tenure-track faculty members representing multiple engineering disciplines, six support staff, and approximately 600 students. Its strengths include dedicated faculty and staff, an engaged and invested student body and alumni, strong administrative and lab support, and well-equipped laboratories and design studios. JMU prizes collaboration among departments and provides unique opportunities for interdisciplinary, team-based teaching and scholarship, with a strong focus on undergraduate research opportunities. More information about the department and undergraduate engineering curriculum may be found at https://www.jmu.edu/cise/engineering/.

Our department is situated in the College of Integrated Science and Engineering (CISE), which implements inclusive practices to increase our student and faculty diversity. More information about the college’s commitment to inclusive excellence can be found at https://www.jmu.edu/cise/diversity-inclusion/index.shtml.

Duties and Responsibilities:

We seek to complement and expand our department by recruiting candidates with expertise in one or more of the following areas:

• Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, or closely related engineering disciplines, who can support some of our existing courses such as statics, mechanics of materials, environmental engineering, etc.
• Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or closely related engineering disciplines, who can support some of our existing courses such as circuits and instrumentation, mechatronics, embedded systems, etc.
• Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, or closely related engineering discipline, who can support some of our existing courses such as statics, mechanics of materials, mechatronics, etc.

Candidates are invited to propose new courses within their area of expertise. Furthermore, candidates with multidisciplinary expertise grounded in these fields will be considered.

Additionally, successful candidates will be able to teach across the four-year curriculum, lead scholarly projects involving undergraduate students, and provide service to the institution as well as engineering organizations within their area of expertise. Each position is a ten-month, tenure-track faculty appointment. The typical teaching load is five courses per academic year, and additionally includes mentorship of engineering student teams as part of the two-year-long project experience in the third and fourth years.

Qualifications:

Each candidate will be evaluated based on their qualifications in relation to the department’s needs in teaching, scholarship, and service. Successful candidates will have an undergraduate degree in an engineering field. Additionally, successful candidates will have a Ph.D. in an engineering field (or closely related field) completed by the start date. Successful candidates must demonstrate in their application materials the potential to:

• Emerge as an agile and adaptive educator who teaches throughout the four-year undergraduate engineering curriculum;
• Develop new engineering courses to complement and expand the undergraduate engineering curriculum’s elective course offerings, including developing courses that may contribute toward any of the new engineering concentration areas;
• Mentor students effectively on undergraduate engineering projects;
• Develop an active scholarly agenda involving undergraduate students;
• Contribute collaboratively toward the operation and well-being of the institution as well as service to the profession in their area of expertise; and
• Integrate inclusive strategies across teaching, scholarly, and service activities.

At JMU Engineering, we are committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and supportive workplace. We are motivated to hire candidates whose qualifications and strengths have the potential to grow and evolve over time.

Additional Posting Information:

JMU was recently reclassified as an R2 institution because many JMU faculty embrace the teacher-scholar model and maintain a student-centered approach to teaching, research, and service. At JMU Engineering, we adapt these core values to meet our educational mission as we continue to grow and evolve into the R2 space.

In our approach to teaching, specifically, our four-year undergraduate engineering curriculum features courses in the first and second years that emphasize holistic design thinking and systems thinking to create engineering solutions that meet client’s and community’s complex needs while accounting for various social, economic, and environmental factors. Additionally, our two-year-long engineering project experience spans across the third and fourth years, providing our students a platform for customized learning in a focused area of interest. Several of these project teams participate in regional and national engineering student competitions.

In our approach to scholarship, we involve students at all levels in our research projects. We value many forms of research, including interdisciplinary scholarship that responds to the needs of our region and beyond. Our faculty typically share the artifacts of their scholarship at regional and national meetings as well as publish their work in peer-reviewed conference proceedings and journals. Our faculty take advantage of internal and external funding sources to support their scholarly projects.

In our approach to service, we contribute to the operation of our institution and the well-being of its people. We also share our academic expertise with professional engineering organizations and community partners beyond the university, contributing to the betterment of our engineering disciplines.

Candidates should prepare their application materials in relation to the duties, responsibilities, and qualifications articulated in this job description. Note that only complete submissions that are uploaded electronically to the JMU application portal will be considered. A complete submission includes:

1) a cover letter summarizing your professional career experiences that prepare you for success in this position (limit the document to 2 pages);
2) a curriculum vitae;
3) a statement describing your overall approach and goals in teaching, specifically addressing your strategies in effective teaching and learning (limit this document to 2 pages and submit this document as ‘Statement of Teaching Philosophy’);
4) a statement describing your overall approach and goals in scholarship, specifically addressing your strategies to engage undergraduate engineering students (limit this document to 2 pages and submit as ‘Other Document #1’);

The JMU application portal will ask you to list three references who can comment on your potential for success in the position. References will not be contacted until a candidate is being considered for a campus visit; please do not request letters of reference until instructed to do so by the search committee chair. For additional information, applicants are encouraged to contact the chair of the search committee: Dr. Shraddha Joshi, joshisp@jmu.edu.

JMU’s Dual Career and Community Resources Program is available for candidates that will be relocating to the area. For more information, please visit https://bit.ly/2OTF1NG.

Conditions of Employment:  

Employment is contingent upon the successful completion of a criminal background check.

E-Verify Notice: After accepting employment, new hires are required to complete an I-9 form and present documentation of their identity and eligibility to work in the United States. James Madison University uses the E-Verify system to confirm identity and work authorization.

EEO Statement:

James Madison University is committed to creating and supporting a diverse and inclusive work and educational community that is free of all forms of discrimination. This institution does not tolerate discrimination or harassment on the basis of age, color, disability, gender identity or expression, genetic information, national origin, parental status, political affiliation, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or veteran status.

We promote access, inclusion and diversity for all students, faculty, staff, constituents and programs, believing that these qualities are foundational components of an outstanding education in keeping with our mission. The university is interested in candidates whose experience and qualifications support an ongoing commitment to this core quality.

Anyone having questions concerning discrimination should contact the Office for Equal Opportunity: (540) 568-6991.

Reasonable Accommodation:

If you are an individual with a disability and need assistance searching or applying for jobs please contact us at (540) 568-3597 or jobs@jmu.edu. You may also visit the JMU Human Resource Office, located at 752 Ott Street, Harrisonburg, VA 22807 and we will be happy to assist you.