Thomas and Colleen Wilmot Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Job Description

Syracuse University seeks an innovative thinker, inspiring teacher, and thoughtful mentor to fill the endowed Thomas and Colleen Wilmot Chair in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering ( CEE ). The holder of this endowed chair will seek to build local, regional, national, and international collaborations to address grand challenges in their field of study. These collaborations may support traditional research activities, technological innovations, the development of entrepreneurial opportunities, and/or the shaping of public policy and administration.

We are especially interested in candidates who can leverage existing strengths in the CEE department and the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems. The College of Engineering and Computer Science ( ECS ) has developed a strategic plan, under the leadership of Dean J. Cole Smith, with a bold vision to develop distinctive research excellence in emerging computing technologies, advanced manufacturing, resilient systems and infrastructure for natural and built environments, materials engineering for emergent applications, and engineering for the well‑being of humans and humanity.

The plan also aims to achieve educational excellence and student success through real‑world experiential education, innovative curricula and responsive programs, and multi‑faceted student support and global educational experience. Implementing the strategic plan will position ECS as a premier college in engineering and computer science, characterized by signature research and educational programs embedded with the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, that yield distinctive local and global impact.

The CEE department is one of four departments within ECS . The department comprises 15 tenured and tenure‑track faculty, 2 full‑time teaching faculty, 2 professors of practice, and 2 staff members serving over 250 undergraduates and approximately 65 graduate students. CEE has two ABET accredited undergraduate programs (Civil Engineering and Environmental Engineering), three Master’s programs (Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, and Environmental Engineering Science), and a Ph.D. program in Civil and Environmental Engineering.

CEE faculty maintain interdisciplinary research and teaching activities and collaborate within the University and externally with partners in industry, academia, government, and NGOs. The department is seeking to expand its interdisciplinary activities with a faculty member who can integrate and apply analytical technologies and specialty areas to multi‑scale civil and environmental systems and whose research complements existing research activities.

• Build an internationally recognized, externally funded, research program in an area that leverages and/or complements existing strengths in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
• Organize multi‑disciplinary, multi‑institutional groups to compete for center‑ and/or institute‑level funding.
• Participate in and lead, as appropriate, collaborative educational programming on campus. Examples include, but are not limited to, sustainability, infrastructure management and policy, hydrologic sciences and engineering, and climate change mitigation/adaptation.
• Lead research and service initiatives with potential impact at the community, state, national and/or international level. Collaborate, where appropriate, with organizations such as the Center of Excellence in environmental energy systems to advance initiatives of mutual interest.
• Teach in the civil and environmental engineering program at the undergraduate, graduate or joint undergraduate/graduate level.
• Supervise thesis/dissertation research of Master’s and Ph.D. students.
• Mentor junior faculty.
• Participate in the academic life of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

• The successful candidate will have an earned doctorate (Ph.D. preferred) in engineering or a closely related field and a record of excellence in academic research that merits appointment at the level of (full) Professor.