Assistant Professor; Practice

Oregon State University Division of Extension and Engagement invites applications ofr a full-time, 12-month, fixed-term, Assistant Professor of Practice position with the OSU Extension Forestry and Natural Resources Program. Salary is commensurate with skills, education, and experience. Reappointment is at the discretion of the regional directors, program leader, and department head.

This position will be based at the Southern Oregon Research and Extension Center (SOREC) in Central Point (Jackson County), Oregon. This position serves Jackson, Josephine, and Curry counties. The academic home for this position is in either the Department of Forest Engineering, Resources and Management or the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University, to be decided within one year of start date.

This academic faculty member reports to the Regional Director assigned to the Oregon Southern Region. Decisions regarding this position are in collaboration with the supervisory team, which includes the Southern Regional Director, Coastal Regional Director, Department Head, and the Extension Forestry & Natural Resources Program Leader.

This Assistant Professor (Practice) carries the general and specific responsibilities of an academic faculty member described in the Division of Academic Affairs’ Faculty Resources. These include the development of Extension non-credit education programming, service contributions and active professional development. Active contributions to scholarship are required (refer to the scholarly outcomes section below for details).

This Extension Forester is part of the Extension Forestry and Natural Resources team that provides non-formal education on forestry and natural resource issues to a wide range of audiences. “Non-formal” refers to off-campus, non-credit learning opportunities such as workshops, field trips, property tours, and demonstrations, as well as indoor presentations, narrative communications such as blog posts and other social media, videos, and articles.

This position is responsible for planning, developing, delivering, and evaluating Forestry and Natural Resources related non-credit educational programs for a variety of audiences in the service area. Providing non-credit educational services to other regions of the state is also encouraged in the incumbent’s area of expertise. Typical audiences include woodland owners and community members within the wildland-urban interface, professional natural resource managers such as foresters and forest workers, collaborative conservation groups and watershed councils, policymakers, forest products firms, tribes, youth, and economic development officials.

Focus areas include forest health, private forest land management, reforestation, invasive species, wildfire, biomass and bioenergy, water resources, forest productivity, forest restoration, and collaborative conservation.

This position is responsible for designing, developing, maintaining and/or carrying out non-credit educational programs and outreach activities to serve broad and diverse populations in an accessible, inclusive, equitable, and socially just manner. This includes complying with civil rights and language/visual access regulations.

The division has built the capacity and expectation for employees to use digital communications and technologies in the modern‑day workplace. This reflects our demonstrable commitment to using digital communications tools and changing technologies as a primary way to raise Oregonian’s awareness of and engagement with our organization, programs and resources. These activities will be included in the annual plan of work, impact statements, and summary of accomplishments/achievements.

The FNR team relies on active and effective communication with colleagues, staff, partner organizations, and stakeholders. This position will require traveling/driving to various sites in the assigned counties.

The Division of Extension and Engagement’s Extension

FNRProgram focuses on programs that promote sustainable and productive forest and natural…