The University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) invites a highly engaged academic to join our
research team in the role of Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Applied Communication,
Leadership, and Culture. The successful candidate for this position will have a program of
research that fits within the broad, interdisciplinary category of the Social Studies of Science;
they will have extensive and varied experience with digital humanities tools (including GIS or
alternative mapping software), both within their own scholarly work and within the classroom;
they will have a strong record of teaching communication and leadership to undergraduate and
graduate students, and a clear understanding of how their own academic research intersects with
their teaching of these subjects. Preference will be given to those candidates who have developed
a research profile that suggests obvious future collaboration with members of the UPEI research
community.
Our Vision: We seek a dynamic researcher who engages in independent and collaborative
multidisciplinary research who is recognized by their peers as a potential leader in areas of
increasing national and international significance and of emerging importance at UPEI. UPEI has
identified experiential learning as one of it pillars within UPEI’s Strategic Plan. This CRC
position is situated within the innovative new program in Applied Communication, Leadership,
and Culture (Faculty of Arts) to maximize the benefit that undergraduate students will gain from
the expertise, experience, and experiential learning opportunities provided by the successful
candidate.
Our focus: The Faculty of Arts? new Applied Communication, Leadership, and Culture (ACLC)
program is designed to play a central role in the revitalization of liberal arts education at UPEI.
Interdisciplinary in nature, the ACLC program will encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration in
teaching and in the creation of research-based, community-embedded projects. It is within this
context that a Tier 2 CRC with a strong record of combining collaboratively-based research with
the teaching of communication and leadership skills and theories is sought. A core feature of
UPEI?s strategic plan, experiential learning lies at the heart of the ACLC program. A Tier 2
CRC with an interest in the innovative delivery of Social Studies of Science curriculum through
the knowledge translation involved in multi-site digital humanities projects will provide students
with a variety of opportunities to combine their academic studies with hands-on technical work
in community and professional contexts.
A CRC with research interests in science studies will be in a strong position to contribute to the
Faculty of Arts? relatively new program in the Social Studies of Science ? an area of exploration
in the Arts at UPEI that brings together faculty from History, Anthropology, Sociology, English,
Environmental Studies, Philosophy, and Diversity and Social Justice Studies. The Social Studies
of Science program is currently working to increase cross-faculty (Arts-Science) collaboration.
Ideally, the new CRC would also be able to contribute to some of the current major
interdisciplinary initiatives at UPEI, key amongst which are the expansion of our Environment
Studies research capacity, and our undertaking to increase our knowledge base and research
profile relating to Indigenous experience.
Applicant requirements: The CRC in Applied Communication, Leadership, and Culture will be
a tenure-stream appointment at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor, conditional on the
successful applicant being approved as a Tier II Canada Research Chair by the CRC Secretariat.
The Canada Research Chairs Program has been established by the Government of Canada to
enable Canadian universities to foster and enhance their role as world-class centres of research
excellence. Tier 2 chairs are intended for exceptional emerging scholars. Applicants who are
more than 10 years from having earned their highest degree (and where career breaks exist, such
as maternity, parental or extended sick leave, clinical training, etc.) may have their eligibility for
a Tier 2 chair assessed through the program?s Tier 2 justification process. Further information
about the CRC program and nominee eligibility is available at http://www.chairs.gc.ca.
To be qualified, a candidate must have a PhD and have developed a strong, collaborative
research program that will overlap well with the objectives of the Applied Communication,
Leadership, and Culture program, in an area of study associated with the Social Studies of
Science. A record of attracting competitive research funding and mentoring students, and the
demonstrated potential to assume a leadership role at UPEI are essential requirements for the
successful candidate. Preference will be given to those candidates who have developed research
profiles that connect well with current research initiatives at UPEI.
Visit the UPEI Human Resources Academic Positions web site for the link to the Canada
Research Chair in Applied Communication, Leadership, and Culture posting:
http://www.upei.ca/hr/academic-positions.
Review of applications will begin on 12 June 2017 and will continue until a nominee is selected.
Applicants are requested to submit a CV, a cover letter that addresses research and teaching
interests, and the names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of at least three
references to [email protected]. Please include your name in the file name.
Inquiries can be sent to:
Dr. Lisa Chilton, Director, Applied Communication, Leadership, and Culture
University of Prince Edward Island
550 University Avenue, Charlottetown, PE, Canada C1A 4P3
Email: [email protected]
UPEI – A Sense of Place
The Program: Applied Communication, Leadership, and Culture
Applied Communication, Leadership, and Culture (ACLC) is an innovative new interdisciplinary
Bachelor of Arts program that draws upon the expertise, energy, and passion of faculty
representing multiple different disciplines in the Faculty of Arts at UPEI. The program is
designed to connect the written, oral and visual communication skills, critical thinking, and
cultural awareness acquired during a Liberal Arts education to the world beyond academia.
Technical skills, work-integrated learning, and career-related mentoring are key components of
the program?s design. It has a simple, tight structure to facilitate easy combination with other
majors and minors. Students enrolled in the ACLC Major program will develop superior
analytical expertise, an excellent base of practical communication, leadership, and technical
skills, and the sort of cultural awareness that will serve them well in a constantly changing global
context. The progression of ACLC courses combines skills training and knowledge building,
with opportunities for experimental and practical application.
Communication: The development of excellent skills and understandings of a wide range
of modes of human communication are central to the program?s structure and outcomes.
The aim of this program is to develop students? abilities to convey their thoughts well, and
to develop excellent tools for marketing their own abilities.
Leadership: During the course of any undergraduate degree in the Arts, some students will
develop leadership skills. However, most Arts degrees do not make the development of
these skills a priority. In this program, exploring the history, theory, and practice of
leadership will be central to the students? undergraduate experience.
Culture: With the exception of a few courses that are designed to teach a set of technical
skills, the topics explored in the ACLC courses will largely be associated with the
development of students? cultural awareness. A key aim of this program is to empower
ACLC graduates to effectively put their leadership and communication skills into practice
within whatever community, work place, or global cultural contexts they may find
themselves.
The successful CRC will be the second hire to be situated directly within the ACLC program.
As of 1 July 2017, there will a Chair in L. M. Montgomery Studies and Applied Communication,
Leadership, and Culture located in the ACLC program. The new Montgomery-ACLC hire
combines an interdisciplinary focus on humanities-oriented Literary Studies with digital
humanities methodologies. The new CRC will bring a complementary science-humanities/social
science focus to the ACLC program. Working together with the program?s director and
visioning committee, the proposed ACLC CRC and the Montgomery-ACLC Chair will
constitute a vibrant academic focus for this new educational initiative in the Arts.
The Faculty of Arts at UPEI
The Faculty of Arts is the largest and most intellectually diverse faculty at the University of
Prince Edward Island with 67 tenure-stream academics. It contains 29 distinct undergraduate
programs, and one interdisciplinary Master of Arts program in Island Studies. The majority of
the students who take courses in the Faculty of Arts continue to select courses in traditional
fields of study, such as English, history, economics, sociology, anthropology, or a modern
language. Likewise, most Arts faculty continue to work within the disciplines they were trained
in while undertaking their doctoral studies. Increasingly this traditional, discipline-defined base
upon which UPEI?s Arts Faculty is situated is being supplemented and reshaped by
interdisciplinary collaborations and innovations, spurred on by the faculty?s thriving culture of
mutual respect and collegial interaction.
Members of UPEI?s Arts faculty have been nationally and internationally recognized for their
excellent scholarship and teaching. Arts faculty have received numerous prizes and awards for
their scholarly publications and collaborative research projects, they have served as presidents
and in other executive roles on national academic committees, and their educational leadership
has been recognized through a wide variety of teaching awards, including three prestigious 3M
National Teaching Fellowships.
The University of Prince Edward Island
UPEI is located on a 136-acre (55 hectare) campus in Charlottetown, the capital of Prince
Edward Island. Established in 1969 through the amalgamation of St. Dunstan?s University and
Prince of Wales College, UPEI is the province?s only university. As a public liberal arts and
science institution, UPEI is committed to encouraging and fostering critical, creative, and
independent thinking; it offers a rich blend of academic programs in Arts, Science, Business,
Education, Nursing, and Veterinary Medicine to approximately 4,600 full- and part-time
students. UPEI is consistently ranked as one of Canada?s top primarily undergraduate
universities. It is home to an increasingly diverse student body, many talented educators, a
thriving research community that includes more than a dozen funded research chairs, and a
growing network of successful alumni.
The University is committed to facilitating the ongoing growth and success of its faculty
members as researchers, and to the education and training of new generations of critical thinkers,
researchers, and scholars across the full range of intellectual, scholarly, and creative endeavours.
It is grounded in and strongly connected to Prince Edward Island?s communities, industries,
governments, and not-for-profit sectors. UPEI has seen significant research growth over the last
decade. This growth has been spurred by expanded research infrastructure, enhanced federal
support for research, and the presence of a dynamic faculty.
The areas of research pursued at UPEI cluster within three themes: Health, Environment, and
Community and Culture. Within each cluster, and at their intersections, we find the excellence of
the solitary researcher working independently, as well as dynamic collaborative research teams.
Together these themes provide an integrating perspective of our emerging and existing areas of
excellence. UPEI?s eleven research constellations provide a rich opportunity to foster on-going
dialogue and collaborative research. Examples of research groups at UPEI are found at
http://www.upei.ca/research/institutes-centres-and-groups.
Information on research and researchers at UPEI can be found at http://research.upei.ca/ or
http://www.islandscholar.ca/.
Information on UPEI Chairs can be found at http://www.upei.ca/research/research-chairs.