Search for Assistant Professor of Social Welfare

The University of Kansas School of Social Welfare (KUSSW) is seeking candidates for two tenure-track assistant professor positions to begin Fall 2024 for academic year appointments. We welcome candidates whose scholarship, teaching, and service would contribute to the School’s mission to promote social, economic, and environmental justice and transform lives and social contexts. Ideal candidates will demonstrate a commitment to the School’s values of relationship building; diversity, equity, and inclusion; practice with integrity; multisystem competency; critical perspective; and empirically informed social work. Faculty candidates with a Ph.D. in Social Work or related fields or a DSW are invited to apply.

With newly innovated curricula and programs, we seek candidates who are passionate about social work education and committed to inclusive teaching and mentoring. We welcome candidates with interests across our BSW, MSW, PhD, and/or DSW curriculums. We are particularly interested in candidates with teaching experience and interests in research methods or social work theory, with prioritized opportunities for teaching in person at both our Lawrence and Edwards (Overland Park, KS) campuses and in our online DSW program. Teaching opportunities include a variety of options to increase accessibility for students, such as evenings, weekends, and online.

As a School of Social Welfare within a comprehensive, premier research university, candidates should have a research agenda and experience that align with our School’s commitment to community-engaged scholarship and service that advance social, economic, and environmental justice. We embrace all types of research within a social justice-informed, anti-racist or racial justice lens, including quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods; creative methodologies; community-based and engaged research; conceptual, historical, and theoretical scholarship; and innovative methods.

We encourage candidates to demonstrate a commitment to supporting their research and scholarship through a variety of funding, community-based partnerships, and other mechanisms. KU SSW is home to several nationally recognized Centers and expert researchers working together around specific topics (e.g. community engagement, prevention and child and family well-being, LGBTQ+ populations, DEI, aging, gender-based violence). Collaborative opportunities exist for candidates to join with these efforts, should they align with their own interests and expertise.

The KU SSW is committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive educational environment for students, faculty, and staff. We aim to recruit and retain faculty to assist us in our mission to identify and challenge oppression in our own school, university, community, and profession. The successful candidates will have a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in social work practice and research, centered in social work values and ethics, and contribute to the school in these areas. 

Review of applications will begin on October 5, 2023. A full job description can be found here with more details on the position, culture and community available in this booklet.