Music: Assistant Teaching Professor in Emerging Music Technologies

Music: Assistant Teaching Professor in Emerging Music Technologies

POSITION DESCRIPTION
The Music Department ) at the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) invites applications for a music technology practitioner with significant accomplishments in emerging technologies for sound and music production, composition, and/or scholarship, to join the faculty of the Music Department as an Assistant Teaching Professor (payroll title: Lecturer with Potential Security Of Employment). The successful candidate will be a founding member of UCSC's Creative Technologies program, a new, multi-departmental, online undergraduate major dedicated to advanced, innovative web-based arts and design pedagogy, and the cultivation of justice and empowered community in digital contexts.

The Music Department seeks a practitioner who, as Assistant Teaching Professor in Emerging Sound and Music Technologies, will teach and mentor a wide range of students in music composition, sound art, and/or sound design and scoring, situated in a vital, collaborative, arts community focused on radical inclusion, accessibility, equity, and justice. The ideal candidate's research and teaching specializations will include expertise in current software, hardware, and/or coding applications for music and sound, music composition and/or related practices in music production, and may include (but need not be limited to) scholarship in sound, hearing, and accessibility; critical histories and genealogies of sound; equity- and justice-focused applications of emerging machine-learning and/or AI-oriented sound and music technologies; socially engaged media; playable media; user experience design; or aural and intermedia components of web and social media applications. The ideal candidate will also have experience in hybrid and web-based teaching tools—preferably with significant teaching experience in online and remote-access environments. We welcome applicants who define their creative work broadly and inclusively, across or transcending traditional disciplinary, genre, or media categories, and who have significant experience in modes of production that center collaborative approaches, and/or that challenge conventional notions of authorship and audience. We welcome and encourage national and international applicants working in any of a wide range of creative practices, including one or more of the general areas described above, but not limited to them.

The UCSC Creative Technologies program—the first online major program in the University of California system— features a multi-departmental curriculum, teaching creative work and its contexts, across disciplines and departments, emphasizing digital environments as a nurturing nexus for justice, community, and imagination. The online program with some in-person components allows UCSC Arts students to transcend departments and genres, transcend the physical space of its campus, and bridge geographically and economically remote communities. The UCSC Music Department is joined by the Art Department and the Department of Performance, Play, and Design, as well as faculty from other Arts Division Programs, in hosting Creative Technologies. This is one of the Music Department's formal commitments to a broad, just, and inclusive curriculum, and its explicit anti-racist and decolonizing practices, which are detailed in the Music Department Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Plan ). Creative Technologies will admit its first cohort of students in Fall of 2024.

Music, Creative Technologies, and the Arts Division at the University of California, Santa Cruz seek candidates for this position who understand barriers facing traditionally underrepresented, marginalized, and historically excluded groups in the classroom and in higher education; who can contribute to diversity, excellence of the academic community; and who have engaged in teaching, research, professional and/or public service contributions that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. These contributions may include, but need not be limited to, pedagogical strategies that contribute to the advancement of access and equal opportunity in education and participation in activities that support the recruitment, retention, and success of scholars and students from diverse backgrounds.

The candidate should provide materials documenting the Basic Qualification as well as the following:

DEI-focused scholarship, creative practice, and teaching, including demonstrable experience working with underrepresented students and communities in creative practice, research, teaching, service, advising, and mentoring.
Evidence of experience involving a range of current software, hardware, and/or coding applications to music and sound.
Evidence of experience in hybrid and web-based teaching tools—preferably with significant teaching experience in online and remote-access environments.
UC Santa Cruz is a Hispanic-Serving Institution and an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution with a high proportion of first-in-family undergraduate students. The campus supports research and teaching with grants awarded by the Committee on Research, the Committee on Teaching, and other groups. This recruitment is supported by the UC Office of the President's Advancing Faculty Diversity program and includes enhanced funding for faculty projects that contribute to diversity and to creating an inclusive climate. In addition to encouraging participation in robust departmental, divisional, and campus mentoring, the campus offers a Faculty Community Networking Program to support its instructors' development and career advancement.

The campus operates on a schedule of three 11-week quarters per academic year. In accordance with workload policy, Music Lecturer with Potential Security of Employment (LPSOE) faculty are assigned to serve as primary instructor for six 5-unit courses per year, with an additional two course equivalency (for eight in total) reserved for service. LPSOE faculty are also required to engage in professional development, which may be through development of pedagogy and/or creative practice, as well as undertake service for the department, division, and University, in consultation with their unit chair or director.

The Assistant Teaching Professor title confers the rights and responsibilities of membership in the Academic Senate, and it has the payroll title "Lecturer with Potential Security of Employment (LPSOE)". The Teaching Professor titles, to which qualified LPSOE may be promoted, confer the rights and responsibilities of membership in the Academic Senate, and they have the payroll title of "Lecturer with Security of Employment (LSOE)" and "Senior Lecturer with Security of Employment (SrLSOE)" respectively. LSOE and SrLSOE are analogous to tenure. This position is based at UC Santa Cruz.

The chosen candidate will be expected to sign a statement representing that they are not the subject of any ongoing investigation or disciplinary proceeding at their current academic institution or place of employment, nor have they in the past ten years been formally disciplined at any academic institution/place of employment. In the event that the candidate cannot make this representation, they will be expected to disclose in writing to the hiring Dean the circumstances surrounding any formal discipline that they have received, as well as any current or ongoing investigation or disciplinary process of which they are the subject. (Note that discipline includes a negotiated settlement agreement to resolve a matter related to substantiated misconduct.)

Music Department:

QUALIFICATIONS
Basic qualifications (required at time of application)
M.A., M.M., M.F.A. or doctorate in music, composition, computation in music or sound, music or sound technology, acoustics; or 5 years' professional experience in a relevant field. The applicant must have a record of teaching and a portfolio of research-driven creative work in sound and/or multimedia creative work. It is expected that the degree requirement will be completed by July 1, 2024.