School of Arts and Communication Post Doc Visiting Research Associate

The School of Arts and Communication at Florida Institute of Technology seeks a Postdoctoral Research Associate as an active participant in the project "Cultivating Core Character through the General Education Core," funded by Wake Forest University and the Lilly Endowment Inc. under co-PIs Lars Jones, Andrew Aberdein, and Heidi Hatfield Edwards. Beyond pursuing their own research agenda, the successful candidate will work under the supervision of project PIs and is expected to begin the 12-month annual position in January 2027 and continue through the end of the grant term in July 2029.

Funds available for approved grant-related travel. Salary supplements may also be available.

Specific responsibilities will include:

• Teaching up to or the equivalent of two core undergraduate courses directly tied to our character education framework, ensuring pedagogical fidelity and integration with project goals.
• Partnering with the PIs to support faculty and student virtue-education training, including workshops, mentoring, classroom sessions, and follow-up engagement.
• Supporting the PIs in university-wide advocacy and outreach to other colleges as well as to the broader public.
• Assisting the lead PI in designing and leading the biweekly character colloquium (topic selection, readings, integration with curriculum).
• Attending weekly project team meetings.
• Contributing to assessment planning, execution, and review to enable a rigorous evaluation of student and faculty outcomes.
• Coordinating implementation and analysis of the project's diagnostic framework, ensuring consistent data collection, interpretation, and integration across participating courses.
• Collaborating on pedagogical scholarship tied to project activities and outputs, in addition to advancing their own research agenda.
• Working with in-house support units, as well as student assistants, to help the PIs develop four Canvas LMS modules for scalable character education use in the University and beyond.

The successful candidate must have:

• A PhD (either awarded or submitted and with defense formally scheduled) in a humanistic discipline, with a research specialization related to character education and/or virtue theory.
• Demonstrated strong interest and ability in teaching.
• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and organizational skills.
• Ability to work both independently and as part of a team that must deal professionally with people at all levels.

Preference will be given for those candidates who have applied character education experience and/or a substantive specialization in virtue theory, complemented by demonstrated pedagogical skill.

The successful candidate will participate in implementing and expanding our program across the instructional, developmental, and scholarly domains rather than acting only as a pure research scholar. Informal queries should be directed to character

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