Assistant Professor - Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Who We Are

The University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) is a premier educational institution that prides itself on academic excellence, research, and community engagement and is actively seeking three Assistant Professors to join our team! UCCS offers a diverse and inclusive learning environment that fosters innovation, growth, and the holistic development of its students.

At the base of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado Springs is captivated by its stunning landscapes, making it a paradise for nature lovers. This city is more than its scenery--a mosaic of history, arts, and a vibrant tech scene. We invite you to join a community that cherishes outdoor adventure as much as forward-thinking growth, an exceptional setting for both career and lifestyle.

Salary/Pay Range: $ 90,000 - $92,000 per academic year. Compensation will be commensurate upon experience and qualifications. This position is Exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime provisions.

Benefits at a Glance

At UCCS, our employees are our most valued asset. We're proud to offer:

• Generous Time Off: Enjoy 22 vacation days, 10 sick days, paid parental leave, 13 recognized holidays, and provisions for bereavement, jury duty, and FAMLI Leave.
• Robust Health Coverage: Our comprehensive medical plans cover preventative care at no cost, including a yearly mental health visit. Plus, benefit from affordable dental, vision plans, and competitive prescription drug prices.
• Financial & Retirement Benefits: Take advantage of our health savings, flexible spending accounts, and life and disability insurance. Plan for your future with our retirement options.
• Further Your Education: Avail nine waived credits per academic year for courses at any CU campus. We invest in your educational and professional growth.
• Wellness & More: From wellness programs aimed at achieving your best self to various additional benefits through CU Advantage, we prioritize well-being and holistic development.
• Want to know your total compensation? Use our calculator to get the complete picture!

Summary

The Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE) at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) invites applications for three tenure-track faculty positions at the level of Assistant Professor. We seek early career faculty members for these positions starting in the fall 2025 semester. The main research areas are machine design, solid mechanics, and aerospace engineering. We will also consider strong candidates specializing in other research areas related to mechanical and aerospace engineering. Tenure-track faculty members are expected to engage in teaching, research, and service activities.

The MAE department currently has 16 full-time faculty. Visit https://eas.uccs.edu/mae for more information.

Essential Functions

The duties and responsibilities of the position include, but are not limited to:

Research

This faculty position will be expected to pursue and attract external funding for their research, maintain a strong and regular publication record, collaborate with existing faculty and/or local industry and government partners.

The MAE Department at UCCS is relatively small; thus, all the tenure-track faculty in the department are expected to teach undergraduate and graduate classes while simultaneously developing an externally-funded research program. The College of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS) at UCCS offers degrees at the bachelor's, master's, and doctoral levels. MAE research facilities include the Advanced Manufacturing Lab, the Combustion & Acoustics Lab, the Computational Fluids & Thermal Lab, the Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Lab, the Data-Driven Modeling Lab, the Heat Transfer & Applied Thermodynamics Lab, and the MultiPhase & BioFluids Lab. More information can be found by visiting https://eas.uccs.edu/mae/research/facilities.

UCCS provides a state-of-the-art HPC cluster called INCLINE for use by the UCCS and Southern Colorado scientific communities. INCLINE's state-of-the-art hardware was designed to support a broad range of high-performance scientific applications, ranging from compiler design to computational physics. INCLINE has better than 150 TFLOPS peak theoretical performance. This heterogeneous cluster supports codes with distributed (MPI), shared (OpenMP), and GPU (CUDA, NVidia A100) parallelization and has high-speed scratch storage and InfiniBand interconnect systems.

Teaching

The MAE department at UCCS places high priority on teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in mechanical and aerospace engineering topics as supports the department. The department is supportive of faculty disseminating research in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum. As such, new courses may be developed based on department need. All faculty are expected to participate in curriculum maintenance including laboratory courses.

The MAE Department has dedicated instructional lab facilities that include the Fluids Lab, Instrumentation Lab, Materials Lab, Senior Design Prototyping Lab, the Space Systems Lab and a machine shop that contains mills, lathes, computer numerical control (CNC) mills, and 3D printers. The machine shop is staffed full-time by a lab technician who provides training in machine shop practices and support with prototype development. MAE students have access to all of these facilities where they can experiment, design, prototype, and learn to use new equipment. The MAE Department is also building new lab and machine shop facilities for aeronautics, rocketry, and space systems, in support of the new Aerospace Engineering Bachelor's degree program.

Service

All tenure track faculty are expected to engage in service activities to support the University, city, state, region, nation and/or professional associations.

Tentative Search Timeline

• Priority will be given to applications submitted by: December 2, 2024 by 11:59PM MST
• Potential campus interview dates: weeks of February 10 and 17, 2025.
• Potential start date: August 18, 2025.

In accordance with the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act, UCCS does not discriminate based on sex in our employment or compensation practices.

• A Ph.D. degree in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, or a closely related field; conferred by date of appointment, is required.