Director/Head and Professor

INTRODUCTION

The University of Connecticut (UConn) invites applications for an outstanding leader and mentor to serve as Director/Head of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering (SoCEE, https://cee.engr.uconn.edu/), within the College of Engineering (CoE) at UConn’s Storrs Campus.

UConn SoCEE provides outstanding undergraduate, graduate, and professional training and is rapidly expanding its international reputation through numerous well-funded research programs led by world-class faculty, consisting of 23 Tenured/Tenure Track faculty members, 4 full-time teaching faculty, and 10 full-time research faculty. The school currently administers two ABET-accredited B.S. programs (Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering), and three PhD and MS graduate programs in Structural Engineering and Applied Mechanics, Transportation and Urban Engineering, and Environmental Engineering. Our ABET-accredited programs include a wide variety of design-oriented courses that integrate real-world problems and culminate in the capstone design course.

The SoCEE at UConn is home to several prominent research centers, including the Connecticut Transportation Institute (CTI), the Eversource Energy Center, Technical Assistance for Brownfields (TAB), Environmental Justice Thriving Community Technical Assistance Center (EJ-TCTAC), and the National Institute for Undersea Vehicle Technology (NIUVT), all led by faculty within the School. These centers are instrumental in advancing research, fostering innovation, and developing strategic partnerships across academia, industry, and government. In 2020, the SoCEE launched the NSF-funded INCLUDE program to integrate the philosophy of inclusion in every aspect of our programs, embracing neurodiversity and encouraging every student to cultivate their unique strengths and create their own identity as an engineer. The School Director/Head will play a critical role in supporting and enhancing diversity initiatives and centers' activities, ensuring impactful education, research, and collaborative initiatives. The Director is expected to actively engage with these centers and programs to foster excellence in education, facilitate faculty involvement, support new areas of growth, and promote interdisciplinary collaboration that aligns with the school’s mission of addressing global challenges through engineering solutions.

The successful candidate will be a senior faculty with strong management skills, a driving collaborative spirit, a shared vision for research and teaching excellence, and a demonstrated capability to lead a highly impactful, extramurally funded research programs. This person will have an outstanding record of professional accomplishments commensurate with an appointment at the rank of Professor, with the opportunity for tenure at hire. Essential characteristics also include a demonstrated ability to engage in a collegial departmental environment and to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. The successful candidate should be an experienced mentor and manager with proven interpersonal skills, a visionary leader who can elevate the reputation of the School, and someone who can continue to identify, attract, recruit, and retain talented students, faculty, and staff. We encourage applications from individuals with backgrounds typically underrepresented in civil and environmental engineering and the School.

Founded in 1881, UConn is a Land Grant and Sea Grant institution and member of the Space Grant Consortium. It is the state’s flagship institution of higher education and includes a main campus in Storrs, CT, four regional campuses throughout the state, and 13 Schools and Colleges, including a Law School in Hartford, and Medical and Dental Schools at the UConn Health campus in Farmington. The University has approximately 10,000 faculty and staff and 32,000 students, including nearly 24,000 undergraduates and over 8,000 graduate and professional students. UConn is a Carnegie Foundation R1 (highest research activity) institution, among the top 25 public universities in the nation. Through research, teaching, service, and outreach, UConn embraces diversity and cultivates leadership, integrity, and engaged citizenship in its students, faculty, staff, and alumni. UConn promotes the health and well-being of citizens by enhancing the social, economic, cultural, and natural environments of the state and beyond. The University serves as a beacon of academic and research excellence as well as a center for innovation and social service to communities. UConn is a leader in many scholarly, resear