Assistant/Associate Professor of English Education

Title: Assistant/Associate Professor of English Education
Division Name: Academic Affairs
College/Unit: College of Arts and Sciences
Department: English
Campus Location: Normal, IL

Job Summary

At Illinois State University’s Department of English, we are committed to supporting English language arts (ELA) teachers’ ongoing professional learning as they seek to enact more equitable and inclusive instruction in their current and future classrooms. We seek to foster and promote our teacher candidates’ (undergraduates and post-baccalaureate students studying to become state certified teachers) abilities to contribute to educational change by honing their skill as critically self-reflexive, innovative, and collaborative learners and teachers.

We invite applications for a full-time, 9-month tenure-track position as Assistant or Associate Professor, beginning August 16, 2025, in the role of Director of English Education.

Tenure-track faculty in our department engage in the intertwined academic activities of research, teaching, and
service, working toward the department’s criteria for tenure and promotion, with a course reduction for director responsibilities.

This position will involve the following primary responsibilities:

Research
• Establish and maintain an active research agenda in equity-oriented English education, broadly construed, that will allow for peer-reviewed publication.

Directing
• Ensure that the English Education’s undergraduate program commitment to socially just ELA instruction is modeled and supported in all aspects of the program.
• Monitor student proficiencies and progress across the program.
• Develop student leadership through program initiatives.
• Mentor and supervise English Education staff, including a full-time Coordinator of Clinical Experiences as well as a full-time English Education Advisor and Clinical Instructor.
• Liaise on behalf of the program with department leadership, other university teacher education programs and leadership, and alumni and community partners to advance program collaboration and mission.

Teaching
• Teach equity-oriented English education courses (which may include introductory, methods, elective, or student teaching seminar coursework), with opportunity to teach in the graduate English education program.
• Collaborate with other program faculty and staff to present and assess course- and fieldwork in a coherent manner.

Service
• Actively engage in service related to directing (e.g., lead the department English Education Committee, serve on the Undergraduate Committee) aligned with the program and department work and mission and that contribute to the department’s reputation as a leading destination for English teacher education scholarship, teaching, and collaboration.

Additional Information

English Teacher Education Programs: Our English education program is a vibrant, inclusive learning and teaching community that seeks to honor and nurture diverse perspectives and lived experiences. We include three tenure-track and one full-time non-tenure track English education faculty as well as two full-time staff members: a clinical coordinator and a dedicated undergraduate program advisor. On average each semester, there are between 160-175 secondary undergraduate teacher candidates journeying through our teacher preparation program, which leads to initial certification. We are committed to recruiting, mentoring, and supporting an increasingly diverse future teaching population. Teacher candidates benefit from a robust set of student leadership opportunities and programs, including an advisory council, a self-funded statewide grant initiative for secondary ELA teachers who wish to include diverse texts in their curricula, and an annual local NCTE African American Read-In partnership with area schools. We offer an accelerated pathway into our master’s degree program for undergraduate program students. For practicing teachers, we offer a graduate master’s degree (MS and MA) program that includes innovative synchronous learning opportunities as well as an in-person summer retreat. The graduate program culminates in a teacher action research thesis project. The accelerated and graduate programs are coordinated by program faculty, not the Director of English Education, but the director will have opportunity to teach within both programs. Both undergraduate and graduate programs’ joint focus on socially just ELA teaching and learning benefit from collaboration among program faculty and staff who share curricular revision and program decision-making. Alums and program students teach in secondary schools throughout the state of Illinois