Professor & Head & Endowed Chair

Position Function:

The head is a full-time administrative position and reports to the Dean of the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences (CALS) and Director of the Mississippi Agricultural Forestry & Experiment Station (MAFES), the Director of the Mississippi State University Extension Service (MSU-ES), and the Dean of the College of Engineering. The head provides visionary leadership for all aspects of the department's current and future activities in teaching, research, Extension, and service. The head is responsible for administrative management fostering teamwork among faculty, staff and students of the department by using appropriate communication, management methods, and organizational guidelines to develop, enable, implement, and evaluate programs. The head fosters relationships and communication with other academic and center/institute heads on- and off-campus, and external stakeholders. The head is responsible for managing appropriated funds, extramural support as gifts, grants and/or contracts, allocating departmental resources, making timely decisions, delegating responsibility, and motivating faculty and staff toward accomplishment of defined teaching, research, and service objectives, as well as other scholarly activities on- and off-campus.

This position holds the William & Sherry Berry Endowed Chair.

Salary Grade:  UC

Please see Staff Compensation Structure or Skilled Crafts and Service Maintenance Compensation Schedule for salary ranges.  For salary grade UC, these positions are "Unclassified" and salary ranges are determined by the hiring department.

Department Profile:

The Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE) has an energetic group of 20 on-campus faculty members engaged in teaching, research, and extension, as well as several other faculty members at MSU-affiliated research centers and adjuncts employed elsewhere. We have a strong culture of mentoring junior faculty members to help them attain success. Our department is co-administered by the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences and the Bagley College of Engineering, and it offers undergraduate (B.S.) and graduate (M.S. and Ph.D.) degrees in three distinct program areas: Biomedical Engineering and Bio-systems Engineering, which are both accredited by ABET, and Agricultural Engineering Technology & Business. Within these programs, the department has roughly 400 undergraduates and 40 graduate students. The department has ongoing collaborations with MSU’s School of Veterinary Medicine, Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems, and several other centers, institutes, and departments. The J. Charles Lee Agricultural and Agricultural and Biological Engineering Building includes more than 6,000 square feet of state-of-the-art instructional and research facilities, and it includes labs for sterile tissue culture, bio-mechanical testing, environmental and agricultural simulation or modeling studies, electronic/robotic design fabrication and testing, GPS/GIS, renewable bio-energy, and student computing resources. More information about ABE can be found at http://www.abe.msstate.edu/.

MSU, a Carnegie Foundation R1-Very High Research Activity Doctoral University, is a comprehensive public institution with more than 23,000 undergraduate and graduate students and nearly 1,500 full-time faculty members. Representative of the American land-grant tradition yet distinctive in character and spirit, MSU is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to award baccalaureate, masters, specialist, and doctoral degrees. MSU’s researchers are assisted by a supportive research administration to place MSU among the top universities in the nation in research and development in the sciences and engineering. A member of the Southeastern Conference, MSU is a major athletic competitor on the national stage, having won the NCAA baseball national championship in 2021. The university is in Starkville, Mississippi, a historic city with a population of about 25,000, roughly 2 hours by car from Memphis, Birmingham, and Jackson and roughly 4 hours from New Orleans, Atlanta, and Nashville. Starkville is a vibrant college town with several signature weekend events highlighting arts, culture, and sports. Its location opens doors to adventures and relaxation in natural settings. Like the state of Mississippi, Starkville is also known for its southern hospitality. Websites for the Chamber of Commerce (https://www.sta