Associate Director of the Language and Culture Center

Duke Kunshan University (DKU) invites applications for the Associate Director of the Language and Culture Center (LCC). The Language and Culture Center is responsible for offering language courses for undergraduate and graduate DKU programs, including courses in English for academic purposes, Chinese as a second language, written and oral communication, and additional languages. The LCC supports intercultural communication among students and faculty at DKU, helping facilitate the achievement of key institution-wide goals, including the development of students who can communicate lucidly and navigate successfully diverse cultures and languages. The Associate Director of the LCC will assist the LCC Director in managing the LCC faculty team and the courses offered by the LCC, and also teach in the LCC. 

Responsibilities and Duties: The duties of the Associate Director will include the following:

• Teach 1.5 courses per semester within the LCC. This teaching assignment will normally consist of teaching one 4-credit or two 2-credit courses per semester, in areas of the candidate’s expertise, and one .5 coaching assignment in the Writing and Language Studio.

• Assist the LCC Director with the following LCC administrative tasks.
  • Reviewing and improving curriculum and courses.
  • Planning course offerings and teaching assignments.
  • Working with faculty members on the design of proposed new courses and syllabi, helping manage the review and approval process for new syllabi.
  • Establishing and managing a data base of LCC course syllabi.
  • Serving on LCC faculty and staff search committees and assisting with faculty and staff searches.
  • Serving on reappointment and tenure review committees.
  • Reviewing annual faculty reports.
  • Reviewing course evaluations.
  • Mentoring LCC faculty in their teaching and scholarship.
  • Planning and delivering faculty orientation and planning workshops.
  • Planning and managing the LCC budget and approving expenditures.
  • Establishing new programs (e.g. summer programs, community-facing programs).
  • Other tasks as assigned by Director.

Required/Preferred Qualifications.

Required:

• Terminal degree/Ph.D. in a field related to language education.
• Significant university-level teaching experience, especially in languages or related fields.
• Administrative experience in higher education.
• Solid record of scholarship.
• Strong command of English.

Preferred

• Administrative experience in language teaching programs.
• Already attained associate or full professor academic rank.
• University working experience in East Asia.
• Strong command of Chinese and/or other languages.

Applicants should provide a cover letter, a curriculum vitae, and a teaching/research statement, and should arrange to have three letters of reference submitted. All materials should be submitted through Academic Jobs Online: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/21301.  Questions about the position may be sent to lcc-search@dukekunshan.edu.cn using “Associate Director for LCC” as the subject line. Priority will be given to applications received by April 15, 2022; applications will be accepted until the positions are filled. 

DKU is a collaborative partnership of Duke University, Wuhan University and the Municipality of Kunshan, China (https://dukekunshan.edu.cn/).  Our campus provides an innovative and robustly interdisciplinary undergraduate liberal arts experience to a student body that will number 2000 students and 150+ faculty, with an acceptance rate of <8% and a student body represented by over 60 countries. We also offer a discrete number of Master’s level graduate programs. The DKU pedagogical model draws on the best of Duke’s educational experience and resources to reimagine undergraduate instruction on an intimate campus setting. 
 

The DKU campus is 37 miles west of Shanghai in Kunshan, and is connected to Shanghai via an 18-minute high-speed train and a subway-light rail train system. DKU provides internationally competitive compensation, housing allowance, child education benefits (for applicable faculty positions), and a discretionary fund or start-up package