Assistant Professor - Computer Science, Cybersecurity or AI

Position Title Assistant Professor - Computer Science, Cybersecurity or AI About the University

Western Washington University, with over 14,000 students in seven colleges and the graduate school, is nationally recognized for its educational programs, students and faculty. The campus is located in Bellingham, Washington, a coastal community of 90,000 overlooking Bellingham Bay, the San Juan Islands and the North Cascades Mountain range. The city lies 90 miles north of Seattle and 60 miles south of Vancouver, British Columbia. Western has additional sites in Anacortes, Bremerton, Everett, Port Angeles, and Poulsbo. Western is recognized nationally for its successes, such as being named one of the top public master's-granting institutions in the Pacific Northwest for 25 years in a row by U.S. News & World Report.

Western Washington University is committed to achieving excellence through advancing inclusive success, increasing our Washington impact, and focusing on transformational education grounded in the liberal arts and sciences and based on innovative scholarship, research, and creative activity. Western's greatest strength is the outstanding students, faculty, staff, and alumni/ae who make up its community. Western supports an inclusive governance structure for all and provides a learning and working environment in which everyone can thrive. In pursuit of this excellence, individual employees are expected to establish and maintain productive and effective inclusive working relationships amongst diverse populations including staff, faculty, administration, student, and external constituents. Further, individual employees are expected to have the ability to operationalize sustainability concepts (economic, societal, environmental) into all aspects of performing their job duties.

About the Department

The Computer Science Department has 18 tenured or tenure-track faculty, 15 non-tenure track instructors, and serves upwards of 600 majors or pre-majors.  During any one quarter, up to 1000 students are taking one or more computer science classes. The department offers an ABET-accredited B.S. in computer science, an M.S. degree, a B.S. degree in Data Science, a B.S. degree in Cyber Security, as well as a CS Education B.A. degree. The department is currently seeking ABET accreditation for Data Science and Cyber Security. The department has a strong history of research collaboration with other disciplines across campus such as Anthropology, Linguistics, Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, Physics, among others, as well as collaborations with regional tech partners such as the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories (PNNL). Collaborations with the Washington Autonomous Vehicle Cluster (WAV-C), and with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC), provide additional opportunities for faculty whose specialty is robotics. Faculty-mentored research projects are a hallmark of CS at WWU, which the department and college support in numerous ways, including by funding student and faculty travel to academic conferences to present their co-authored publications. 

The Computer Science Department and the College of Science and Engineering are committed to cultivating equitable and diverse learning and work environments to fulfill Western’s strategic goals of Advancing Inclusive Success, Increasing Washington Impact, and Enhancing Academic Excellence. The department and college’s on-going efforts include faculty involvement in workshops on inclusive pedagogy and educational research on student success, among others. 

Work Life Balance: The department supports a balance between teaching and scholarship, and between life and work. Standards for tenure and promotion are designed with this commitment in mind. Faculty have reasonable yearly teaching loads, which enables them to pursue their scholarship interests via mentoring of undergraduate and graduate students. Above all, high quality engaged instruction is highly valued. 

Department Growth: As part of the university’s commitment to cultivate expansion in critical disciplines, Kaiser Borsari Hall was recently built to increase capacity in Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering. The 20,000 square foot facility houses state-of-the-art teaching classrooms, new faculty offices, a showcase robotics lab, as well as student project spaces. 

Student culture: The department has a long history and culture of student engagement in faculty-mentored research that is supported by the College. The extent and success of student research is evidenced by several alumni each year proceeding to PhD programs at top institutions. Our undergraduate and graduate students land careers at a wide range of destinations, from top tech companies to startups, to national labs. 

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