Department Chair - English

Job Description:

We seek a caring and decisive Department Chair at the rank of Associate or Full Professor with an outstanding record of scholarly research, extramural funding, and administrative experience, particularly in strategic planning, program-building initiatives, and faculty mentoring. The successful candidate will guide the department during a time of renewal and growth, bringing forward-looking ideas to strengthen the role of English and the humanities more broadly at UTEP and in the greater El Paso/Ciudad Juárez borderlands region. Such a chair would foster a culture of transparency and collegial collaboration and will advocate for the department's needs while championing our accomplishments within the college, the university, and the community.

Key Responsibilities

• Mentor and support the professional growth of faculty and staff, with particular emphasis on grant-writing and securing external funding.
• Represent the department to the college, university, and wider community, build connections across disciplines, advance the department's visibility, build on community partnerships, cultivate external funding opportunities, and advocate for resources within the university.
• Coordinate and support curricular development and revision to make the different program curricula more representative of existing academic strengths in our faculty.
• Collaborate with college leadership to grow graduate programs, support curricular innovation, and advocate for new faculty lines aligned with departmental strengths and priorities.
• Lead recruitment and retention initiatives at the undergraduate and graduate levels, while fostering student success through mentoring and career preparation.
• Head program assessment to ensure quality and compliance with institutional standards.
• Oversee teaching assignments, scheduling, faculty workloads, evaluations, and budgetary operations in effective, transparent, and collaborative ways.

Requirements:

• . in Literature, Rhetoric and Writing Studies, English Education, or closely related field.
• Rank of Advanced Associate or Full Professor.
• Substantive administrative or leadership experience at the Department, College, or University levels.
• Funded extramural grants and an active scholarly publication record commensurate with an Assoc./Full Professor at a Carnegie R1 institution.