Faculty Director for Imagining America at Penn State

The Pennsylvania State University Imagining America Search Committee invites applications for a full-time Faculty Director position for Imagining America (IA), a national organization hosted at Penn State from July 1, 2027, whose mission is to bring together scholars, artists, designers, humanists, and organizers to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world. Working across institutional, disciplinary, and community divides, IA strengthens and promotes public scholarship, cultural organizing, and campus change that inspires collective imagination, knowledge-making, and civic action on pressing public issues. 

The Faculty Director is an academic administrative role who would be tenure eligible in one of three colleges: Arts & Architecture, Liberal Arts, and Health & Human Development, preferably with a research profile that aligns with the mission and values of IA. The Faculty Director will lead a team of 2-4 professionals with administrative and programmatic duties, and will work closely with the Imagining America National Advisory Board to collaboratively advance and embody IA’s mission, values, and goals, advocating for and strengthening arts, humanities, and design methodologies within and beyond the cultural disciplines.

A full description and application instructions can be found here:

Review of applications will begin November 16, 2026, and continue until the position is filled.

Please direct questions about the search process via email to the search committee co-chairs: Nicole R. Stokes, Professor of Sociology at Penn State Abington nks5344@psu.edu  and Sylvia Spears, Vice Chair, National Advisory Board, Imagining America sylvia.spears@collegeunbound.edu