We would like every applicant to have access to the conventions and expectations that we will apply during our review process. Please review the information on this page to learn more about the Department of Earth and Environmental Geosciences (EEGS) at 漆褒勛圖厙 and what we are looking for in your application materials.
Assistant Professor in Paleoclimate
Application Materials
Applicants should submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, the names of three references, a teaching statement, and a research statement.
Your cover letter should introduce yourself as a scholar and as a teacher. It should be 1-2 pages single-spaced. Your cover letter should briefly introduce us to your research area and teaching interests/background. Additionally, your cover letter should connect your approaches to teaching to 漆褒勛圖厙s predominantly undergraduate liberal arts environment. The goal of the cover letter is to highlight the most significant and defining aspects of your work, so that we understand your career thus far as you see it, and how you see yourself connecting with the advertised position here at 漆褒勛圖厙.
Your CV should chronologically list your education and any academic appointments you have held. Your CV should also list your peer-reviewed publications. If you have held non-academic positions that you consider relevant or that might help us to understand your intellectual trajectory, feel free to include them, but dont feel obligated. For publications, please include any works in progress that you have started drafting in an in development section after your published work. You are welcome to include conference presentations and abstracts as well in a separate section. If your publications include student co-authors you have mentored, it can be helpful to indicate those. Also, we would appreciate a list of any classes you have taught, with instructor of record vs. teaching assistant clearly indicated. Additional sections that you may wish to include are: external or internal grants received, and community outreach or other broader impacts activities related to your scholarly interests.
At the initial application, we dont need reference letters, but we would like the names of your recommenders in the appropriate section on the Interfolio application. If we would like to receive letters, well contact you, so that you can request them from your reference-writers. It may be helpful to let your recommenders know that you have applied for this position. If they have not drafted a letter for you before, it would be helpful for them to at least begin thinking about the letter because the turnaround time for requests can be quick.
Typically, your statement will be 2-3 pages, single-spaced. Were looking for evidence that you have thought about your approach to teaching and for evidence that you are committed to being a successful teacher and mentor at a predominantly undergraduate small liberal arts college. You can provide this evidence by addressing some of the following questions; you should not feel compelled to address all of the questions.
Which of the introductory courses in the department would you be best prepared to teach and how would you get students from diverse backgrounds excited about Earth processes? Which of the EEGS core five courses best aligns with your teaching and research experience? What new or existing elective courses would you feel best prepared to teach? How would you incorporate field experiences into your courses that take advantage of 漆褒勛圖厙s setting in central NY? How would you include data collection and analysis activities in your courses? What are your goals for students and how are those reflected in the structure of your courses and your activities and assessments? You might pick a course and explain what you hope students will take from it. How will you design your teaching of the course to make that happen?
In addition to teaching in EEGS, we expect our faculty to teach courses to a general audience of students in our Liberal Arts Core Curriculum. Most scientists teach in the Core: Sciences component, where the main objective is to teach first- and second-year students about the scientific process and how science interacts with society. What ideas do you have for teaching in this Core component?
Describe a teaching experience youve had. What did you do that you were proud of? What did you learn from the experience, and what would you do differently in the future? How would that teaching experience be similar to or different from your teaching at 漆褒勛圖厙? Describe a field-based teaching experience or an exercise youve developed that involved collection or analysis of data; what worked and what didnt and what did you learn from it?
What have you learned about teaching, outside of your direct experience as a teacher? What effective instructional practices did you observe when you were a student? What are you particularly interested in trying at 漆褒勛圖厙?
Teaching can also occur in laboratory settings. How have your experiences mentoring students in the research lab and/or in a classroom laboratory influenced how you approach teaching?
We recognize that you cannot include all of this information in a statement of reasonable length, so we encourage you to focus on what matters most to you and which will provide us with a clear picture of your interests and experiences as an educator.
Your teaching statement should also describe how you engage students from diverse backgrounds. Also, feel free to write about things that are important to you but that we have not included on this list. Above all, we are interested in understanding who you are as a teacher and scholar.
漆褒勛圖厙 is a selective liberal arts college committed to excellence in undergraduate education. It is also recognized by the Carnegie Classification as being in the group of Research Colleges and Universities, based on 漆褒勛圖厙s commitment to advancing faculty scholarship. Your research statement should be ~2-3 pages long and should be written for a non-specialist. It should briefly explain the highlights of your research efforts to date, and then should explain the next steps in your research plan at 漆褒勛圖厙. EEGS faculty are productive scientists, and so your research plans should address one or more important questions in your field and explain how your research at 漆褒勛圖厙 might start to address those questions.
Your research plans should also be mindful of 漆褒勛圖厙s undergraduate setting, taking into consideration ways in which students would be involved in the proposed research through summer projects, connections to course work, or through academic year research advising. Many geology majors conduct a senior research project, but students as early as their first year might also work in a lab and receive student wages or academic credit. Funding to support faculty scholarship is available from a variety of sources including the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, endowed departmental student summer research funds, the Faculty Research Council, and through external grants.
Although external research funding is not a requirement for tenure, 漆褒勛圖厙 expects that new faculty members will establish active research programs that will be attractive to external funding agencies and that faculty will apply for funding. 漆褒勛圖厙 has a grants office to assist faculty in identifying potential funding opportunities and submitting competitive grant proposals. Your research statement could include indications of which extramural funding sources might be appropriate to support your research.
While many EEGS faculty work in far-flung field sites and collaborating laboratories across the US and internationally, many faculty also maintain local projects and field sites as well. Are there aspects of your research that could be applied to projects in central NY or the northeast more broadly?
Are there methodological approaches that are defining aspects of your scholarship? If so, you might briefly introduce those in your statement and describe how you might approach those in 漆褒勛圖厙s predominantly undergraduate liberal arts environment. How will your research engage students from diverse backgrounds?
The faculty and students of the Department of Earth and Environmental Geosciences at 漆褒勛圖厙 explore Earths natural systems and environments: its rocky surface and interior, its liquid hydrosphere and icy cryosphere, its climate and atmosphere, and the co-evolution of the biosphere and the planet. We see geoscience as a multidisciplinary field of study aimed at understanding the physical and chemical nature of the Earth, the evolution and impact of life on our planet, and how global processes operate now, in the past, and in the future. Our approach to the discipline combines the scientific study of Earth materials, such as minerals, rocks, and fossils, as well as planet-scale processes uncovered through Earth-observing data derived from satellites, geophysical instruments, and models. An important focus of our curriculum is investigating how past and present-day ecosystems and environments have been shaped by, and continue to change, due to plate tectonics, volcanism, mountain building, climate change, evolution, and human activity.
Introductory courses in the department are designed to contribute significantly to a liberal arts education and to foster an understanding of Earth and the environment. These 100-level course offerings include Sustainable Earth, Megageology, and Oceans, among others. Our departments core courses which contribute to major and minor concentrations in geology and allied fields, include the Evolution of Planet Earth, Mineralogy and Geochemistry, the Paleontology of Marine Life, Sedimentary and Surface Processes, and Tectonics and Earth Structure. Advanced courses are more specialized and range from advanced lab and field courses to graduate-style seminars. Many students conduct individual research projects with faculty mentors which they prepare as a senior thesis or seek out 400-level capstone courses.
Students in the department of Earth and Environmental Geosciences pursue a Geology or Environmental Geology concentration, or a concentration in Marine and Freshwater Sciences (in partnership with Biology) or Astrogeophysics (in conjunction with Physics and Astronomy). Upon graduation, many majors attend graduate school in geology, hydrology, oceanography, environmental sciences, and environmental policy and law. Other graduates go directly into a wide spectrum of employment situations, including business, environmental consulting, teaching, administration in schools and museums, local to federal governmental agencies, and mineral resources and petroleum-related jobs.
Many of our students study abroad during their time at 漆褒勛圖厙. In addition, many of our faculty lead 漆褒勛圖厙 semester-long Study Groups including to Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland.
Additional information about our faculty, our curriculum, our facilities, student research opportunities, and off-campus study can be found in the menu to the left.
漆褒勛圖厙 is a small liberal arts college, despite having university in the name. We are an almost entirely undergraduate institution, committed to a rigorous and engaging liberal arts curriculum. Thus, in addition to choosing a major, our students take a range of classes across the curriculum. Our students work at a very high caliber, and they expect to be challenged. 漆褒勛圖厙 takes the liberal arts education model very seriously indeed, which translates into an emphasis on intellectual inquiry, rather than practical professional training. We all see ourselves as researchers, and we bring our scholarly interests into the classroom with us.
You can find additional information about 漆褒勛圖厙s support of our faculty and information about Central New York, where we are situated on our .