NEW YORK, SYRACUSE.   

The Department of Geography, Syracuse University, seeks a tenure-track, Assistant Professor with expertise in Community Geography.  The successful candidate will be a geographer with analytical skills in GIS, experience in community development/community organizing and participatory research, and research interests in some combination of public health, environmental justice, social and economic inequality, and/or geographies of race/ethnicity.   

The successful candidate will direct the Syracuse Community Geography Program (http://www.communitygeography.org/), a unique endeavor of Syracuse University and the Geography Department to provide pro bono spatial analysis within the context of community proposed, community led collaborative projects aimed at understanding and addressing significant social, economic, environmental, and cultural problems facing the city of Syracuse, the Central New York Region, and beyond.  Now in its sixth year, and a crucial component of the University's mission of "Scholarship in Action," the Syracuse Community Geography Program has completed an impressive array of community-driven analyses on issues ranging from food insecurity, to access to resources for teens at risk of STDs, to the pattern of hydrofracking leases in sensitive watersheds, to the development of safe walking routes to elementary schools.  Housed in the Geography Department's Integrated Spatial Dynamics Lab, the Community Geographer works closely with a steering committee comprised of university faculty, students, and staff, and representatives of area foundations, community-based organizations. 

Syracuse Community Geography incorporates practices of Public Participation GIS, but also requires extensive networking with community partners and other units and departments on campus, grant-writing, skills in helping community organizations define problems and formulate research questions, close work with, and supervision of, graduate and undergraduate assistants and interns in the discovery and development of data, data analysis, and the preparation of maps and reports, and the coordination of community action on the basis of the analyses made.   The Community Geographer therefore must be flexible and able to juggle a complex workload, able to respond quickly to challenges, and skilled in negotiating among constituents with often divergent interests or social/political orientations. 

This is a twelve-month position.  Because this is a non-conventional position, the relative distribution of work and expectations will be worked out (and continually reevaluated) by the successful candidate and the Chair of the Geography Department, with advice from the Community Geography Advisory Board.    

APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS:  
For consideration, a candidate must complete an online faculty application at www.sujobopps.com and attach online the following: Curriculum Vitae; letter of application detailing the applicant's experience in public participation GIS and community engagement, directing interns, managing projects, and grant activity, as well as their integration into teaching and scholarship; and a portfolio of appropriate work exemplifying points made in the letter of application.  Please combine files, as only three files can be attached (at a maximum of 2MB each file).  

In addition, applicants will be required to provide the names and full email addresses of three references, who will then be automatically contacted and asked to submit their letters directly.  

Syracuse University is an EO/AA employer and particularly encourages applications from women and minority candidates. 

Application deadline: November 14, 2011