Visual Communication Professor, Rice University

Rice University’s Program in Writing and Communication seeks applicants for a two-year, nonrenewable instructor position in Visual Communication. This is a full-time, benefits eligible position. The primary focus of this position is to collaborate with the faculty and staff of the Program in Writing and Communication (PWC) and its partners to advance visual communication across the various schools, departments, and programs at Rice. The PWC was established in 2012 and includes the Center for Written, Oral and Visual Communication and the First-Year Writing-Intensive Seminar Program.

Position Details: We are launching a sustainable visual communication initiative to enhance our programming in this area, and the person hired for this inaugural position will have a major role in helping the PWC achieve this goal.

• teach 2-3 upper or lower-division courses on visual and multimodal communication per year
• develop workshops for faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students
• plan and oversee a symposium on visual and multimodal communication pedagogy in second year of the appointment
• launch a collaboration with the Center for Written, Oral, and Visual Communication
• the instructor is expected to continue her/his disciplinary research and professional activities

Required Qualifications:

• A PhD awarded, or all PhD requirements fulfilled, between 2012- June 1, 2017.  The degree should be earned in visual or mult-imodal communication or a related discipline that strongly emphasizes one of these areas.
• Successful teaching experience at the university level
• Demonstrated commitment to research and scholarship
• Ability to work independently as well as collaboratively with faculty and students
• Proficiency with Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop)
• Excellent writing and interpersonal communication skills

Desired Qualifications:

• Commitment to developing serious, critical, and theoretical programs in visual and multimodal communication
• Experience creating training materials for different academic audiences
• Experience producing multi-modal scholarship
• Experience visualizing experiments and producing graphs
• Experience leveraging interactive multimedia in scholarly pedagogy
• Proficiency with quantitative and visualization tools such as R, Tableau, GIS, D3.js
• Knowledge of computer-aided drawing tools (CAD)

Applications accepted through February 28, 2017

Full position posting and application details

Applications: submit the following online:

1. cover letter
2. C.V.
3. research statement
4. teaching philosophy
5. academic writing sample
6. media sample (portfolio of 4-5 examples of visuals/visual projects)
7. two letters of reference

Any questions, contact: Elaine Chang, PWC Program Coordinator (ElaineChang@rice.edu)