Brown University TT/Environmental Remote Sensing

[nothing_else_matters]

The Environmental Change Initiative (ECI) (http://www.eci.brown.edu/), Brown University, invites applications for a Brown University tenure-track faculty position in Environmental Remote Sensing. We seek a scholar who uses remotely sensed data to analyze the multiscalar and complex relationships between human societies and the natural environment. Requirements include a Ph.D. in an environmentally-relevant social or natural science, a record of achievement in the use of remotely sensed data in environmental science-focused research demonstrated by peer reviewed publications and/or externally funded research, and a commitment to excellence in graduate and undergraduate teaching. We seek candidates whose research interests and expertise complement and strengthen existing ECI research foci in land change science, biogeochemical processes, and conservation science. The successful candidate should integrate research efforts with environmentally relevant natural and social sciences spanning sociology, ecology, evolutionary biology and geological and climate science and have experience working in an interdisciplinary team. In addition to remotely sensed data, we are interested in candidates who broadly incorporate geospatial technologies in their research. S/he will maintain an active, externally-funded research program and be involved in teaching at both undergraduate and graduate levels. ECI fosters interdisciplinary research and education in the environmental sciences at Brown. The University is making investments in the ECI including new resources for interdisciplinary research, post-doctoral research appointments, graduate education and a cooperative graduate program with the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) at Woods Hole. The candidate will be a core faculty member of the ECI with an appointment in a tenure-granting department such as Sociology, Geological Sciences, or Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Appointment is expected at the Assistant Professor level, although exceptional circumstances would warrant appointment at a higher level. The department appointment will require that the candidate’s qualifications are commensurate with the tenuring department’s standards for a tenured or tenure-track appointment.

Requirements include a Ph.D. in an environmentally-related discipline, a record of achievement in the use of remotely sensed data in environmental science-focused research, and a commitment to graduate and undergraduate teaching.

To apply, please submit a letter of interest addressed to Jack Mustard, Search Committee Chair, Environmental Change Initiative, along with a current CV, teaching and research statements, and 3 letters of reference for the Assistant Professor position. Applications should be submitted through Interfolio at www.interfolio.com/apply/12528 and must be received by September 6, 2012 in order to receive full consideration.

For administrative questions regarding this position please contact Bonnie Horta at [e-mail] or [phone].

Brown University is an EEO/AA employer. Minorities and women are encouraged to apply.

[Anon]

Wow. As a sociologist, I'm glad my department offered a comp in radar engineering or I wouldn't even be remotely qualified for this position.

[ideas]

who says academia is becoming too specialized?

[same heer]

"Wow. As a sociologist, I'm glad my department offered a comp in radar engineering or I wouldn't even be remotely qualified for this position."

Funny. I was thinking the exact same thing. Literally, word for word, though I have to admit that I am trying my best to drop the use of conjunctions as I find that they cramp my style.

[well]

Are you guys saying that there are no sociologists who use GIS in their research? I'm pretty sure that is not true.

[guestt]

While of course this may be a position attractive/suitable for some sociologists (and other social scientists who read this blog), it sounds a bit like a job for someone with a physical science background who includes in his/her work social concerns. Given that the chair of the search committee is a geoscientist and the way the new initiative is described, it seems unlikely the committee is going to be looking for sociologists. (I base this on having colleagues at my university doing searches in environmental studies/science, and knowing that there are a lot of conflicts around who is capable of doing what. It seems - and this is just based on my limited sample - that there is an assumption that physical scientists can take on the social world much better than social scientists can handle traditional physical science topics.) Of course, hopefully I'm wrong and that there are hordes of sociologists out there who are fully capable of working in both worlds...

[Anon]

The position is asking for expertise in some area of remote sensing; last time I checked, GIS is not remote sensing.

[moron]

GIS is remote sensing. You heard of this new thing, wikipedia?

[Anon]

Once again, remote sensing is not GIS. This should be fairly obvious to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the two practices. Remote sensing involves the process of collecting environmental data, i.e., using weather radar to collective reflectivity data on storms. GIS isn't involved in the process of remotely collecting environmental data; however, GIS may be used to map data collected through a given remote sensing interface (e.g., topographic and hydrological modeling.)

Anyhow, I've wasted too much time on this already. In the future, I would urge you to avoid using Wikipedia for anything more complex than looking up Justin Bieber's biography.

[hmmm]

Oh, okay...so GIS is a program used to analyze remotely sensed data. So isn't the relationship analogous to he one between stata and statistics (if you use stata, then you are doing statistics)?

[wow]

I seriously can't tell if this poster is trolling. Unbelievable. GIS is a method of information storage, not software. Software implementations include packages like ArcGIS, PostGIS, or QGIS. Remote sensing data is a wholly different methodology. While it might occasionally overlap with GIS analyses, knowledge of one will not necessarily mean knowledge of another and the two cannot be conflated.

[drbearjew]

If you use GIS, you don't have to be using it to do remote-sensing. You could be using it to map food insecurities.

For instance...http://www.cim-network.org/

[Anon]

Well, that's an interesting point, but the analogy is a bit off. If using Stata, then you are indeed doing statistics; if using a GIS program (e.g., ArcView GIS), then you are not at all doing remote sensing; you are modeling geo-spatial data.

By way of comparison, Stata shares with GIS the aim of modeling data, but neither is directly involved in the collection of data itself. In other words, GIS does not collect remote sensing data (e.g., radars collect rain reflectivity data) any more than Stata goes out and distributes a survey to a sample of respondents. GIS and Stata might very well analyze data acquired through radar sensing and a survey respectively, but the programs themselves are not directly involved in this process.

Of course GIS might be immediately fed data through links to remote sensing architecture, which simply makes the process of data collection and analysis more efficient and immediate while at the same time leaving the role of either GIS (anlaysis) and remote sensing (data collection) unchanged. Similarly, this happens with CATI systems as well (CATI data fed immediately into Stata), but one could hardly claim on this basis that Stata is actually doing the data collection in this practice.