Academic Job Openings

It would probably make sense for us to start a post every August for the academic job openings that virtual world specialists might be interested in. To keep it simple, let's only have positions open to people with the standard university-level terminal degrees - PhD, JD, MFA.

In 2005, there aren't going to be too, too many of these. But time, and the digital revolution, marches on.

I'll start with my department's two tenure-track openings at the assistant professor level...

Two Faculty Positions
Department of Telecommunications
Indiana University, Bloomington Indiana

University’s Department of Telecommunications seeks two new tenure-track Assistant Professors. Applicants should hold the Ph.D., M.F.A, L.L.M. or other appropriate terminal degree and present a promising program of either (1) scholarly research using social scientific, legal, or historical methods related to electronic media / communications or (2) creative activity in interactive new media. Promising candidates must also be able to teach effectively in one or more of the department’s undergraduate areas of concentration: Media and Society, Design and Production or Industry and Management. Graduate teaching is also possible.

We offer a B.A. in Telecommunications as well as M.A., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees. Undergraduates can also pursue certificates in New Media and Interactive Storytelling and in Game Studies. There are established M.A. and M.S. programs in Immersive Mediated Environments (MIME).  Joint M.S. / M.B.A. and M.S. / J.D. degrees are offered in conjunction with the Schools of Business and Law.  Our Institute for Communication Research offers support for faculty research including assistance with stimulus design/creation and data collection using an array of methodologies (psychophysiology, focus groups, personal interviews, and computer-assisted survey/experiment administration). We also have digital audio, video and multimedia production technologies. Salaries, fringe benefits and research and teaching opportunities are consistent with peer Research I institutions.

Current research faculty include experts in media psychology and sociology, media economics, political communication, organizational communication, digital games, and media law, policy and technology. Creative faculty emphasize digital and analog media production and digital gaming and interactive storytelling. While we especially seek people in law and policy, management, media psychology, interactive storytelling, game design, 3D modeling, and international communications, our overall objective is to attract the best applicants in the field, regardless of interests, who either enhance current strengths or extend our reach. More about the positions, the department, and our faculty and programs can be found at http://www.indiana.edu/~telecom/. and http://www.indiana.edu/~icr/index.htm.

Applicants should submit (1) a cover letter summarizing their qualifications for the position and explaining how they will add to, supplement or complement existing department strengths, (2) a current vita, (3) selected research publications and/or a portfolio documenting recent creative work (as applicable), and (4) evidence of effective teaching. Three letters of recommendation should be submitted directly by recommenders.

Direct questions and applications to Professor Walter Gantz, Chair, Department of Telecommunications, Radio-TV Center, 1229 E. 7th Street, Bloomington, IN, 47405-5501. Professor Gantz can be reached by phone at (812) 855-1621, fax at (812) 855-7955 or via e-mail at [email protected].

Start date is August 15, 2006. Review of applications will begin October 21, 2005 and will continue until the positions are filled.

Indiana University is an Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Employer. We strongly encourage applications from women and minority candidates as well as from two-career couples.

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Let me stress that I am on the recruiting committee for these positions, and also the Director of Graduate Studies for the department. And we are posting this at Terra Nova. Get the picture? :) We are really interested in people with research and production agendas in MMORPGs, simulations, and virtual worlds. If you're just starting out (finishing grad school by August 2006 or just been out a couple of years), going for (or with) an appropriate degree (PhD, JD, MFA),  and have a track record of work in the media subject areas listed above (media  and society, law, policy, etc., or production), I'd encourage you to apply. 

Comments

[Mike Sellers]

1.

Good idea, Ted. But you said, To keep it simple, let's only have positions open to people with the standard university-level terminal degrees - PhD, JD, MFA.

How then do positions where no PhD exists (or where any PhD is more or less a forced fit) become staffed? I know that a few universities (e.g., SMU, UT-Austin, CMU - probably others) have offered positions to people with significant industry experience when no graduate program yet exists. This seems to make a great deal of sense in new areas.

I hope that game design and similar programs continue to take root in first-tier academia. But I don't believe it's tenable to limit the pool of researchers or instructors in such areas to those who have already been through the academic mill. Doing so overly limits the pool of potential applicants and further increases the academic/industrial divide.

(Apologies if this isn't the kind of discussion you were looking for here.)

[Edward Castronova]

2.

Mike, one part of it is that we are limited by these basic rules. In my case, the restriction to people with PhDs, JDs, and MFAs is a university thing, we have no control over it.

I agree that it would help to have some forum where, for lack of a better term, nontraditional positions could get advertised. So if anybody has positions open to those with extensive industry experience, I think it's within the spirit of the thread to advertise them here as well.

[Al Riddoch]

3.

It is my strong impression that in the UK a PhD is not nearly as strong a requirement. As I do not currently have a PhD I would be interested to see this post's context expanded to include jobs where a PhD is not necessarily required, or if registration for PhD study is a requirement of the job.

[Jessica Mulligan]

4.

I have to agree with Mike; University rules are self-limiting in this context. Unless someone like Raph, who earned his MFA before taking the Kings Shilling, decides to go full-time into academia, you're not going to find many truly qualified instructors.

[ren reynolds]

5.

Dr C > we are limited by these basic rules.

Who sets the rules? If they are federal ones established in law, then is looks tough. But if they are set by the institution then why can’t they just be changed – other than general institutional inertia that is?

[Mike Sellers]

6.

Things change slowly in academia, Ren.

But according to some">http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/org/fac-senate/titles_docs/benchmarklecturer_report.pdf">some sources (PDF), there are other options for even first-tier schools. MIT, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, U Penn, and Duke (among others) all use the "Professor of Practice" title to "designate positions for which the assumed credential is professional experience rather than the usual scholarly degrees." These often follow the typial Assistant, Associate, and full Professor path and at some schools can even be tenure-track positions.

Every institution is going to be different, but I think in areas like game development (especially online game development) for the foreseeable future many top-notch researchers and instructors are going to come from industry and will not have PhDs.

[Edward Castronova]

7.

As some of you may know, we have a MS/MA program here called MIME (http://www.mime.indiana.edu), which is a game design program. We are going to build it out into a joint MFA with the Fine Arts department. That way we can start offering the terminal degree ("broadly eligible for university employment" not "deadly" although that may be descriptively more accurate) to people designing games. It's our way to work through the rules.

[Mike Sellers]

8.

MIME looks like it has an excellent faculty... but these are people whom, I suspect, for all their knowledge and talent have little direct experience in designing or developing commercial games. That's the essence of the academic/industrial divide: you can start awarding terminal degrees in game development, but where is the experience in the faculty and curriculum behind those degrees coming from?

So long as terminal degrees are required for teaching in new areas like game development, either those teaching will not have actual experience in this area, or will be learning from those with degrees, but who themselves learned from those without direct experience. (Moreover, I suspect that those coming out with terminal degrees in game development will continue to be devalued by industry until the programs show their worth -- meaning that many such graduates will end up heading back into academia, perpetuating the cycle and widening the divide.)

[F. Randall Farmer]

9.

Jessica Mulligan> University rules are self-limiting in this context ... you're not going to find many truly qualified instructors.

Ooh! Unless someone wants to give me an honorary doctorate, or something! :-) That's the ticket!

[ren reynolds]

10.

> Ren > Who sets the rules?
Mike > Things change slowly in academia, Ren.

Pffft, now that my generation is the generation starting to move up through the ranks I expect it to move a lot quicker!

And I certainly think that in some areas there is a need for an injection of actual experience.

If I’m an expert at anything it’s actually telecoms as I used to be global head of strategic this and that and a bit of the other (Internet, product development, hosted applications and digital media – as it happens) for a very large telco. At the same time I do ethics of technology, and geez I find that some academic’s notion of what the internet is as a technical and commercial structure has almost no relationship to reality. In some cases this can be fine, highly abstract models of things are good for some purposes, but when one is looking at certain aspects of ethics and how they pertain to policy etc, it kinda helps to have an inkling of the industry you are talking about, not what you think it is in a utopian or distopian vision. In fact I’d go so far as to offer my time to give classes on industry areas I have real experience of, but no I ant got none of that book-learnin in it.
/rant

[Jessica Mulligan]

11.

Randy Farmer wrote:

Jessica Mulligan> University rules are self-limiting in this context ... you're not going to find many truly qualified instructors.

Randy>> Ooh! Unless someone wants to give me an honorary doctorate, or something! :-) That's the ticket!

That and large salary. When it comes to the game industry, universities are going to have the same problem government has in hiring qualified people; qualified people can make a lot more money in the commercial sector than they can teaching full-time.

[Edward Castronova]

12.

OTOH, we don't have crunch time. On the contrary, we have anti-crunch time. It's called 'summer'.

[Greg Boyd]

13.

Ted - stop that "summer" talk. You are going to make me think about giving up these 14 hour days toiling away in this law office. I bet you don't work Christmas Eve either. Bah . . .

[Edward Castronova]

14.

owned