Job Description

JMU is a selective, public institution with a growing national reputation for offering experiences that lead to an outstanding education and supportive environment for students, faculty and staff. The student body includes approximately 21,000 undergraduate and 1,800 graduate students, with over 1,000 full-time instructional faculty.

JMU offers thriving programs in the 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 maintaining strong student/faculty interaction, and innovative faculty research.



General Information:

The School of Media Arts and Design (SMAD) at James Madison University (JMU) invites applications for a tenure track appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor, beginning in August 2027. We seek a teacher-scholar whose instructional interests and research or creative practice engage visual communication, media literacy, mass media, audiences, storytelling, and culture.

SMAD’s distinctive undergraduate major prepares students to become well-rounded multimedia storytellers and offers four concentrations: Creative Advertising, Digital Video and Cinema, Interactive Design, and Journalism. SMAD also boasts one of the nation’s finest media production facilities that offers instructional workspaces for creating video, audio, graphics, animation, websites, and apps. The school has about 700 undergraduate majors and more than 20 faculty members, who represent a blend of professional and academic interests. For more information, go to http://www.jmu.edu/smad.

The School of Media Arts and Design is part of JMU’s College of Arts and Letters, which enrolls more than 3,100 undergraduate majors and about 150 graduate students across ten academic units. Home to several interdisciplinary centers and institutes, the College embraces the teacher-scholar model and encourages excellent applicants within our disciplines, as well as scholars and teachers eager to work across them.



Duties and Responsibilities:

SMAD seeks a student-focused colleague to teach a core course in visual literacy and culture, as well as some combination of foundations and critical analysis courses. Depending on the successful candidate’s experience, this position could also allow for teaching in one of SMAD’s four concentrations or in a media-centric General Education course. The teaching load is 3 courses each semester. Tenure-track faculty must have an active creative or scholarly agenda that may include juried production activity or peer-reviewed academic research. Tenure-track faculty also have service responsibilities and opportunities within the department, college, and institution.



Qualifications:

An MFA, Ph.D., or other terminal degree is required; ABD applicants with the degree near completion will be considered with the requirement that the terminal degree be conferred no later than August 2027. The preferred candidate will have college-level teaching as well as professional industry experience in media or related fields.



Additional Posting Information:

Interested candidates must complete the online application on the JMU career site and provide the following:
-Cover letter
-CV
-Names and contact information for three references