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UC San Diego’s college system provides undergraduates with a living and learning community that mirrors the experience of studying at a smaller liberal arts college while affording the benefits of a large research university. The eight colleges in UCSD’s system each have their own academic programs through which students fulfill the university’s writing requirements. These programs define the student experience at each college, reflecting each college’s mission statement and educational philosophy, providing a general education foundation on which the students build their disciplinary expertise in their major and upper-division coursework. The overall structure, subject-matter, and educational approach of these programs vary from college to college, but in fulfilling the UC-mandated writing requirement, they are all designed to help students develop the core competencies of written communication, oral communication, critical thinking, and information literacy.

Thurgood Marshall, Seventh, and Eighth Colleges all share a commitment to social justice and employ equity-centered and inclusive pedagogies in their programs. This year each program seeks to hire an Associate Director as an Assistant Teaching Professor. These positions are tenure eligible. The academic programs of Seventh College and Thurgood Marshall College each seek candidates for the position of Associate Director of Writing, and Eighth College seeks candidates for the position of Associate Director of Engagement and Community

All three colleges value antiracist pedagogy, alternative grading practices that center equity, and the development of course content and assignments that empower students to see writing as a tool for social change. In putting forth this joint call, we demonstrate our practice of collaboration and community and hope to attract scholar-educators committed to researching and enacting pedagogical practices that center students, especially our most diverse student populations. This joint call is the first in the history of UCSD’s college system; it signifies our programs’ commitments to fostering a culture of writing and curriculum design on our campus that responds to the significant social changes wrought by the global pandemic, man-made climate change, and the ongoing reckoning with U.S. racial and social hierarchies. Though we expect the three Assistant Professors to collaborate in their roles as Associate Directors to cultivate programmatic and pedagogical initiatives in the name of social justice, the individual positions have different structures and responsibilities.

Overview of Positions

Eighth College Critical Community Engagement [ https://eighth.ucsd.edu/]
Eighth College is the newest of the eight undergraduate colleges at the University of California, San Diego and will matriculate its first cohort of students in Fall 2023. Building on the College’s theme, “Engagement & Community,” its academic mission is to introduce students to critical community engagement in the context of addressing structural racism. The program encourages interdisciplinary inquiry, critical thinking, and invites multifaceted engagement with communities – both in the San Diego area and elsewhere.

The college’s academic program consists of four courses: The three lower-division courses provide a foundation in critical community engagement with an emphasis on historical and current effects of structural racism on communities. Two of these courses are writing-intensive; all three provide an introduction to interdisciplinary inquiry. The upper-division capstone course requires a community-based project; these group projects encourage interdisciplinary approaches. All courses focus on the challenges posed by the effects of structural racism in communities and present students with a variety of methodologies including participatory action research, qualitative/ethnographic methods and collaborative, interdisciplinary work.

In addition to teaching in the program, the Associate Director assists with hiring Unit 18 lecturers and TAs coupled with trainings to implement critical community engagement principles and social justice education that informs teaching, learning and writing. A background in writing studies is not required but is welcomed. The Associate Director will also work with the curriculum team on the development, implementation, and assessment of the program’s learning outcomes. Core responsibilities include developing and maintaining strategic partnerships with campus offices, departments, and programs and community organizations that affords bi-directional commitment, respect and awareness of intersecting power dynamics.

Seventh College Synthesis Program [https://seventh.ucsd.edu/synthesis-program/index.html]
The Seventh College Synthesis Program invites students to engage in an anti-racist curriculum that challenges them to look at the climate crisis and its complex interconnected challenges from an interdisciplinary and critical perspective. It functions as two interconnected programs in one. The first program is a two-course writing-intensive sequence that asks students to deconstruct the tools of academic and public discourse in order to form strategies for addressing the planet’s intersecting local and global ecological, socioeconomic, and political changes. The second program is an upper-division project-based course, each with its own instructor and theme, offered under one umbrella in collaboration with a broad range of campus and community partners.The writing courses are taught by full-time Unit-18 lecturers in a class size of 20 students per section.

The Associate Director for Writing (ADW) for the Synthesis Program is responsible for the day-to-day oversight and administration of the required lower-division courses. The Synthesis Program’s ADW assists in hiring Unit-18 lecturers and with observations of their teaching. The ADW also works with the curriculum team on the development, implementation, and assessment of the program’s learning outcomes.

Thurgood Marshall College [https://marshall.ucsd.edu/doc/]
Thurgood Marshall's Writing Program, Dimensions of Culture (DOC), instructs students in critical reading and writing by developing students’ historically grounded understanding of the racial projects that have shaped U.S. culture and society. The lower-division sequence (DOC 1-3) is required of all first-year students at Marshall College and constitutes the core of Marshall College’s general education requirements, providing a unified academic experience for all first year students that is grounded in the College’s commitment to social justice. In DOC, lecturers present content in large lecture courses with the assistance of graduate student TAs. Lecturers support the TAs who facilitate discussion sections and assess student written work. One of the primary responsibilities of DOC’s Associate Director of Writing is to spearhead the development and implementation of a comprehensive and antiracist system of training graduate student teaching assistants from diverse programs across campus in their classroom teaching philosophy and practices.

Applicants can submit one application if they have interest in more than one of the Associate Director positions. Please use the specialization tool to select the college(s) to which you are applying. Additionally, please be sure to discuss in your cover letter how your teaching, research, and service align with the college program(s) you have selected.

The University of California, San Diego is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, covered veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.

As a University employee, you will be required to comply with all applicable University policies and/or collective bargaining agreements, as may be amended from time to time. Federal, state, or local government directives may impose additional requirements.

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