Faculty Cluster Hires


The College of Engineering at Iowa State University has an aggressive mission to advance our global impact by addressing the society-changing challenges that will define our worldwide quality of life in the coming decades. The nation and the world face critical challenges over coming decades that require innovative solutions. It is difficult to imagine a vibrant world economy in 2050, let alone a vibrant national economy, still as heavily dependent on petroleum as we are now. It is difficult to imagine a stable and prosperous global economy in the year 2050 if there are billions of people without access to clean water. It is difficult to imagine maintaining a high quality of life in 2050, let alone improving the quality of life for the billions in the third world, using natural resources at the same per capita rate as we do now.

It is the collective responsibilities of governments, private industry and research institutions, including universities, to find solutions to these challenges and to implement them using socially and politically equitable methods. It is our belief that the fundamental solutions to many of these issues are predicated on the wise use of technology. Of government, industry and research institutions, only universities have as their fundamental mission to develop the technologies upon which those solutions will be based.

This will be a tremendous and daunting undertaking but the stakes are equally as daunting. It is the mission of Iowa State University (ISU) to be a major collaborator and source of innovation working towards addressing these critical challenges. To best serve the educational needs of our present and future students, and to maximize our ability to engage in research that addresses important national and international needs, we must configure ourselves in a seamless, interdisciplinary environment that builds upon our strengths yet enables us to extend our reach beyond our present intellectual boundaries.

The most critical investments we will make towards achieving these goals are in our faculty. The faculty we welcome to the College of Engineering (CoE) will have and build expertise in areas of scholarship that will be important over the next decades and which address these society changing challenges. While acknowledging our role in addressing these global challenges, we must also meet the shorter term educational needs of our departments. These sometimes opposing goals can be met by having an environment where interdepartmental and intercollegiate research are common, as is teaching across department lines should the need arise.

Our ability to make an impact in a technology or science area is in part predicated on having a critical mass of collaborative faculty. To work towards making this impact, the hiring of new faculty in the CoE will be in “clusters.” A cluster is a group of faculty with common scholarship interests in a technology or science area who, through their collaborative efforts with our current faculty, advance the state of the art. Their efforts will contribute towards meeting society’s new challenges while also bringing innovation to instruction by teaching across departmental boundaries. Clusters will initially be populated by our present faculty and expanded over multiple years as collaborative faculty are recruited. The desired attributes of these faculty are:

  1. Strong interest in interdepartmental and intercollegiate research in areas that will sustain and increase in their importance into the future.
  2. Excellent research and teaching skills.
  3. Ability and desire to be visible nationally and internationally
  4. Excellent people and communication skills and passion for student success
  5. Compelling desire to make the world a better place.
  6. Willingness (and qualifications) to teach across department boundaries.

To be considered for a position, click here.