The University of Delaware (UD) Department of Plant and Soil Sciences seeks outstanding candidates for a 9-month Continuing Track position of Assistant Professor to begin by the Fall of 2024. This position is 85% teaching, 10% Research and 5% service.

The Continuing Track (CT) is UD’s full-time, continuing faculty line, similar to the tenure track. CT faculty enjoy contracts that increase in length over time and, like tenure-track faculty, receive full and generous benefits, including family-friendly benefits, as part of their compensation package. CT faculty with terminal degrees hold professorial rank and have a path to promotion up to full professor; CT faculty without terminal degrees are at the instructor rank and have a parallel path to promotion. All CT faculty earn sabbaticals, have opportunities to pursue research, participate in shared governance, and hold academic leadership positions. More information can be found on the CT Faculty Caucus page, “Why Do You Want to be a CT Faculty at UD?”

Job Roles: Technology is at the core of landscape architectural work and is used in all phases of the design process. The BLA program seeks a Continuing Track professor to teach digital design. This position requires a candidate who has strong skills in visual communication, digital media workflows, and landscape simulation.

Additional areas of expertise should include foundational design principles, urban or regional design and analytics. This position requires an individual with teaching and scholarly or professional experience in digital landscape modeling, representation, and media in the context of contemporary landscape architecture design process and workflow. A successful candidate is expected to teach core design studios at multiple undergraduate levels that employ a range of project scales and complexities. The successful candidate will also lead refinements to a broad range of digital design and GIS instruction in the BLA Curriculum. Areas of scholarly interest might include novel approaches to representation and the pedagogy of graphic instruction, landscape visualization, and modeling, or visual communication and literacy for increasingly diverse student populations and audience types. Candidates must hold a LAAB accredited professional degree in landscape architecture and a terminal degree in their field of graduate study.

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor of Landscape Architecture and a PhD in an allied field, such as Urban Planning, Geography, Design, etc., or Masters of Landscape Architecture.
• Practice in the field of Landscape Architecture and professional registration(s) as a Landscape Architect and in allied fields are desired.

In addition, the successful candidate is expected to take an active role within the continued development of the Bachelor of Landscape Architecture program, including curriculum planning and assessment, and accreditation support. Candidates will be assessed on willingness and ability to actively take part in this critical service to the program, as well as departmental, college, and university service. UD BLA faculty serve as mentors for the undergraduate students in a dual advising system. As such, candidates should have a proven record of advising or mentorship of students or other professionals in a formal or informal setting, and display ability to help undergraduate students navigate a professional degree program, secure internships, and identify desired career paths. The successful candidate for this position will also demonstrate the capacity to collaborate with various departments, faculty, researchers, and staff within the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. It will be important for the successful candidate to have the ability to engage in, lead or develop existing or new landscape architecture outreach activities and programs. These may be within the BLA program and/or in collaboration with the Biden School UAPP Program, College of Engineering, DENIN or other UD outreach centers.

General Information: The Bachelor of Landscape Architecture program is fully accredited by the LAAB and is home to approximately 65 full-time undergraduate students. The four-year, 124 credit curriculum includes six core studios following two introductory representation courses, a four-course construction sequence and a six-course plants and ecosystems sequence. The program has a strong history of community support and outreach through the Coastal Resilience Design Studio and the Living Lab, both housed within the program. Additional collaborations with the UD Agricultural Extension, The UD Biden School, Climate Hub, and the Delaware Environmental Institute (DENIN) among others foster student learning and provide needed design and planning expertise to Delaware communities.

The Department of Plant and Soil Sciences resides within UD’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Department faculty are world-renowned and include two American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows, four named professors, and several members who have received high honors from professional societies. Two professors in the department have received the highest honor that UD bestows on faculty, the Alison Professorship. The department is highly collaborative across college and institutional lines and has strong interactions with Cooperative Extension personnel and faculty and staff in other departments and colleges. The University of Delaware is committed to excellence and consequentiality guided by a Delaware Will Shine blueprint for a preeminent learner-centered research university. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching classifies UD as a “very high research activity” institution (R1), a designation achieved by only 3% of U.S. academic institutions. UD is in scenic Newark, DE, an excellent geographic location within two hours of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. The University is a Land Grant, Sea Grant, Space Grant, and Carnegie Research university, with externally sponsored activities exceeding $200 million.

The University of Delaware is an Equal Opportunity Employer and encourages applications from minority group members and women.

Salary: University of Delaware salaries and fringe benefit packages are highly competitive. A start-up package will be available.

Deadline: Application review will begin on January 5, 2024. The search committee will continue to accept applications until the position is filled.

Application: To apply, submit a current curriculum vitae, statements of Teaching (2-3 pages), Research (1-2 pages), and Service (1 page). Provide three landscape architectural project samples (conceptual or built), a statement describing your previous efforts and future plans to create a diverse and inclusive learning environment (1 page), and the contact information for at least three professional references. Submitted documents of finalists will be shared with departmental faculty.

For further information, contact the committee chair, Associate Professor Eric Bardenhagen (ebard@udel.edu).