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As part of the University of California Santa Barbara’s Mellichamp Chairs in Racial Environmental Justice faculty cluster, UCSB’s Environmental Studies Program seeks to hire a Mellichamp Chair in Racially Just, Resilient and Sustainable City Futures. The ideal scholar will be a faculty member who engages environmental and/or climate justice challenges through a focus on racially just, resilient, and sustainable city futures. By 2050, 70% of all people will live in urban environments, driving important environmental changes and transforming the way that human society interacts with its environment. At the same time, urban settings highlight striking inequalities, including access to a clean environment and resilience to environmental disruptions: disadvantaged and racially diverse communities in the world’s cities are often exposed to higher levels of pollution and climate disruption and have insufficient resources to mitigate environmental stressors.

The Environmental Studies Program seeks a scholar who can help identify a vision for how cities can become more just, resilient and sustainable while avoiding pathways that exacerbate inequalities and drivers of social-environmental problems. The new faculty member should have a record of scholarship, teaching, service, and professional activities that places a clear emphasis on urban environments to (a) explore the driving forces behind environmental and climate injustices facing racialized and marginalized populations; (b) document the varied consequences of those dynamics for cities and their inhabitants; or (c) propose effective solutions to enable more just, resilient and sustainable futures for cities. The Program is eager to review applications from scholars with any disciplinary background who employ quantitative research methods. Examples of relevant areas of emphasis may include (but are not limited to): environmental racism, climate injustice/apartheid, urban design/planning, political economy, migration and mobility studies, as well as place-based, multiscalar, and planetary scale conceptual and methodological approaches.

This faculty position is part of an interdepartmental cluster hire focused on the study of racial environmental injustices using quantitative methods. The ideal candidate for this position will integrate data-driven evidence with a deep understanding of the challenges facing specific communities. Candidates should demonstrate experiences drawing on a range of sources of evidence, research methods, and research questions and should have a record of direct engagement with key stakeholders. The University is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through research, teaching and service as appropriate to the position. Applicants are encouraged to consider applying to more than one of the Mellichamp Chairs in Racial Environmental Justice searches simultaneously and will be encouraged to consider joint appointments or affiliated appointments with other relevant campus departments (see the following links for searches in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and the Division of Sciences).

Responsibilities of UC faculty members include producing cutting-edge research, teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels, recruiting, supervising, and mentoring students, and participating in university service and other professional activities.

In 2023-24, a wide array of UC Santa Barbara departments is partnering with the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion to launch a special faculty recruitment initiative named after Benjamin Banneker, the 18th-century African American mathematician, astronomer, anti-racist, engineer, ecologist, and peace advocate. Funded by an Advancing Faculty Diversity grant from the UC Office of the President, with the goal of diversifying faculty, research, and curriculum, the Banneker Initiative aims to recruit scholars, scientists, and engineers whose disciplinary and interdisciplinary work would take place within the community of interests exemplified by Banneker’s intellectual, ethical, and social commitments as an African American scientist. Applicants may be eligible to be fellows in the Benjamin Banneker Initiative. The community of Banneker Fellows will receive funding for cohort building and professional development activities, including enrollment in the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity Faculty Success Program, proposal writing training, and seed grants.

UCSB’s Environmental Studies Program has a strong focus on multi-disciplinary, equity-based, and solutions-driven scholarship and teaching. Established in 1970, the Environmental Studies Program is one of the oldest and largest programs of its kind, with more than 1,000 current majors and 8,000 alumni. The program has a longstanding commitment to integrative research and teaching, and a balance among the biophysical sciences, social sciences, humanities, and applied professions. For more information, please see http://www.es.ucsb.edu/

This position is open rank, so applicants for the ranks of (advanced) Assistant, Associate and Full Professor are welcome to apply.

Cluster Description
Environmental harms and benefits are not shared equitably, either domestically or internationally. Throughout the world, low-income and marginalized groups, particularly communities of color and Indigenous populations, experience the greatest exposure and vulnerability to pollution, climate risks, and their associated negative health effects. These inequities are driven by multiple forces, including structural racism perpetrated by government institutions, corporations, and discriminatory and inequitable legal systems.

Environmental and racial justice scholars have recognized the ways these intersecting and cascading socio-environmental crises reinforce and amplify each other. Policies that confront unequal environmental harms represent an important step towards racial justice, while racial justice is a precondition for lasting solutions to climate disruption, environmental instability and societal adaptation. There is a fundamental need for interdisciplinary scholarship that holistically explores these intertwined challenges. UCSB, a Hispanic-Serving and Asian American, Native American, and Pacific Islander-Serving Institution, seeks to hire a cluster of four scholars whose research and professional activities describe, diagnose, and propose solutions to the inequities that permeate attempts to manage the environment. These hires will be appointed as Mellichamp Chairs in Racial Environmental Justice, joining the existing Mellichamp Chairs across several other fields, and a strong and expanding group of faculty across numerous departments, and colleges at UCSB with expertise in environmental, climate, food, Indigenous, and social justice. They will be expected to participate in collaborative activities with the other scholars hired as part of this cluster, including, but not limited to: cross-university working groups, workshops, and conferences. These efforts will be supported with campus and chair resources.

The new cluster of Mellichamp Chairs in Racial Environmental Justice will amplify existing campus strengths in both interdisciplinary environmental research and environmental and climate justice. These scholars, appointed at the Associate or Full Professor level, will be primarily housed in or across the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, the Environmental Studies Program, and the Department of Statistics and Applied Probability, interacting with faculty and possibly having joint appointments across multiple departments including Anthropology, Asian American Studies, Black Studies, Economics, Global Studies, Political Science, and Sociology. With these positions we have three objectives: (1) prioritizing race as a critical lens through which to understand environmental injustices; (2) building UCSB's capacity for collaborations among humanistic, qualitative, and quantitative research teams on racial environmental justice; and (3) expanding definitions of (and imagining the redesign of) the environment to include the built and urban spaces that many marginalized communities inhabit. The University is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through research, teaching and service.

The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age or protected veteran status. For the University of California’s Affirmative Action Policy please visit: https://policy.ucop.edu/doc/4010393/PPSM-20. For the University of California’s Anti-Discrimination Policy, please visit: https://policy.ucop.edu/doc/1001004/Anti-Discrimination.

As a condition of employment, you will be required to comply with the University of California Policy on Vaccination Programs, as may be amended or revised from time to time. Federal, state, or local public health directives may impose additional requirements.