Tenure-Track Assistant Professor: Physical Geography

Overview

Working Title:
Tenure-Track Assistant Professor:
Physical Geography

State Role

Title:

N/A

Position Type: Instructional / Teaching Faculty

Position Status: Full-Time

FLSA Status: Exempt:
Not Eligible for Overtime

College/Division: College of Integrated Science and Engineering

Department: 100060 - Integrated Science and Technology

Pay Rate: Commensurate with Experience

Specify Range or Amount:

Is this a JMU only position? No

Is this a grant-funded position? No

Is this a Conflict of Interest designated position? No

Beginning Review Date: 10/27/2025

About JMU:

Mission:
We are a community committed to preparing students to be educated and enlightened citizens who lead productive and meaningful lives.

Vision:
To be the national model for the engaged university: engaged with ideas and the world.

Who We Are:

Located in Harrisonburg, VA. JMU is a selective public institution with a growing national reputation for offering experiences that lead to an outstanding education and inclusive environment for students, faculty and staff. The student body includes approximately 20,000 undergraduates and 1,900 graduates, with over 1,000 full-time instructional faculty.

JMU offers thriving programs in liberal arts, science and technology, and professional disciplines at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels. JMU has achieved national recognition for the high quality of its academic programs, focus on student/faculty interaction, and innovative faculty research.

General Information:

We invite applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Physical Geography within the School of Integrated Sciences (SIS) and its Geography program starting August 2026. SIS supports innovative and dynamic academic careers for 40 faculty rooted in our undergraduate programs—Geography, Integrated Science and Technology (ISAT), and Intelligence Analysis—along with growing graduate programs. SIS emphasizes collaboration, cross-disciplinary teaching, and student engagement.

This position focuses on the physical geography curricular needs of the Geography program within SIS. We are committed to imaginative, boundary-crossing geographical scholarship with problem-centric focus, integrating science, technology, and the human dimension into engagement with environmental challenges. The Geography Program serves around 200 majors and 90 minors, with well-resourced labs and opportunities in physical geographic techniques and geospatial tools. Current foci include urban climatology, land cover change, remote sensing, infrastructure geopolitics, humanitarian geospatial applications, and more, with global and local applications.

Duties and Responsibilities:

For this tenure-track position, the new faculty member will teach the core Physical Geography course, offer upper-level courses in areas of expertise (especially those listed below), and potentially a General Education course in world regional geography. A typical teaching load is three courses per semester, with opportunities for curricular development. We encourage a global perspective with local connections and regional/international field experiences.

We are open to a range of physical geography subfields but are particularly interested in expertise in one or more of the following: biogeography, wildlife/biodiversity studies, landscape ecology, agriculture/food systems, climate science, applied/critical physical geography, water resources/hydrology, geomorphology, soils, and oceanography/coastal landforms and processes.

As a member of Geography, faculty participate in service to the school, college, and university, and in the professional community. We strongly support engaged learning, community engagement, and civic engagement.

Qualifications:

Successful applicants will have completed a Ph.D. by the time of appointment. A Ph.D. in Geography or closely related field with a broad background in physical geography is preferred. The ideal candidate should demonstrate ability to connect research with others to address complex multi-scale environmental problems. We are particularly interested in individuals who:

• have a commitment to excellence in undergraduate geography teaching and…