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Assistant Professor-Urban Design and Adaptive Urban Transformation-Department of City and Regional Planning

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Position description

Please note: Due to technical difficulties with our application system, the deadline for this recruitment has been extended to 11/1/19, 11:59pm. Please contact ofew@berkeley.edu with questions.

Assistant Professor - Urban Design and Adaptive Urban Transformation -
Department of City & Regional Planning

College of Environmental Design
University of California, Berkeley

The Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) at the University of California, Berkeley, seeks applications for a tenure-track faculty position in Urban Design and Adaptive Urban Transformation at the rank of Assistant Professor with an expected start date of July 1, 2020. Candidates must have the potential and vision to make significant intellectual contributions, be committed to develop new initiatives and multidisciplinary collaborations, attract externally-funded research, and demonstrate excellence in teaching. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are core values at UC Berkeley and the Department of City and Regional Planning. Our excellence can only be fully realized by faculty, students, and staff who share our commitment to these values. Successful candidates for our faculty positions will demonstrate evidence of a commitment to advancing equity and inclusion.

We seek applicants who actively engage with design strategies necessary to meet urgent challenges related to climate change and widening wealth, race, and gender divisions and disparities manifested in urban environments. Both evolving technical methods--such as spatial analysis, parametric design, visualization, and data science--and new qualitative design methods--such as public sector design, participatory design, and human-centered design--present enormous opportunities for urban designers to richly propose and analyze urban forms at multiple scales, visualize possible urban futures, and contribute to engaging multiple diverse publics in innovative participatory planning and decision processes. For more information about DCRP, see http://dcrp.ced.berkeley.edu

In addition to demonstrated excellence in applying design skills to urban environments at a range of scales, the ideal candidate would do work that engages with the core urban planning issues of equity and social justice, builds upon the core place-making and regulatory framework concerns of the planning based urban design field, and pushes methodological boundaries through the use of digital analysis, design, and visualization platforms. The candidate’s research could connect to any number of critical socio-spatial concerns such as: urban resilience; urban adaptation to climate change and sea level rise; the social impacts of global warming on all aspects of urban life; livable density; designs for socially inclusive eco-communities; and built form typologies and infrastructure patterns for sustainable compact cities. We would particularly welcome scholars whose work is relevant to participatory public planning processes and outreach to under-represented communities to create inclusive and equitable forms of urbanization, and of scholars whose work addresses urban design in a global context.

Successful candidates should be able to teach urban design and plan preparation studios, as well as courses such as methods of digital analysis and visual representation, the history and theory of urban form, urban design policy and practice, and environmental design research methods. In addition, candidates have the opportunity to engage with existing and emerging design-related work within the College of Environmental Design and across the UC Berkeley campus.

Basic Qualifications:
A professional master’s degree (or equivalent international degree) and at least 1 peer-reviewed publication at time of application; or a PhD (or equivalent international degree) or enrolled in PhD or equivalent international degree-granting program at the time of application.
Preferred Qualifications:
Completion of Ph.D at time of application strongly preferred.
Professional master's degree (or equivalent international degree) be in a design field.

Applications must be submitted electronically by 11:59 PM (Pacific time) Friday, November 1, 2019 via the AP Recruit online application system: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/apply/JPF02322.

Queries may be directed to the search committee chair at dcrp.cal@berkeley.edu with “Urban Design and Adaptive Urban Transformations” in the subject line.

The department is committed to addressing the family needs of faculty, including dual career couples and single parents. Further information is available at http://ofew.berkeley.edu/new-faculty. The department welcomes applications from individuals who may have had non-traditional career paths or who may have taken time off for family reasons (e.g., children, disabled, or elderly), or who have achieved excellence in careers outside academe (e.g., in professional or industry service).

The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age or protected veteran status. For the complete University of California nondiscrimination and affirmative action policy see: http://policy.ucop.edu/doc/4000376/NondiscrimAffirmAct .

*Letters of reference are not needed at this time. Candidates will be notified if they are requested by the search committee at a later date. All letters will be treated as confidential per University of California policy and California state law. Please refer potential referees, including when letters are provided via a third party (i.e., dossier service or career center), to the UC Berkeley statement of confidentiality (http://apo.berkeley.edu/evalltr.html) prior to submitting their letters.

Application Requirements

Document requirements
  • Curriculum Vitae

  • Cover Letter

  • Statement of Research

  • Statement of Teaching - statement of teaching philosophy and summary of teaching experience (if any)

  • Statement on Contributions to Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion - Statement on your contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion, including information about your understanding of these topics, your record of activities to date, and your specific plans and goals for advancing equity and inclusion if hired at Berkeley (for additional information go to https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversity).

  • One or more recent academic publications

  • Additional space: Publications: in case files are too large (Optional)

  • Additional space: Publications: in case files are too large (Optional)

  • Round 2: sample syllabus of an urban design studio course - A brief sample syllabus of an urban design studio course that you would teach (no more than 5 pages).

    (Optional)

  • Round 2: syllabus for another course - A brief syllabus for another course that you have taught or would like to teach.
    (Optional)

  • Round 2: student evaluations - Student evaluations of your teaching activities for the past three years. For courses that were co-taught or in which you were a teaching assistant, please specify which parts of the evaluation pertain to you.
    (Optional)

  • Round 2: writing sample 1 - such as journal articles or book/dissertation chapters
    (Optional)

  • Round 2: writing sample - such as journal articles or book/dissertation chapters
    (Optional)

  • Round 2: writing sample 3 - such as journal articles or book/dissertation chapters
    (Optional)

Reference requirements
  • 3-5 required (contact information only)

Job location

Berkeley, CA