Mellon Digital Scholarship Post-Doctoral Fellow, #14-090
Center for Digital Learning & Research
The Center for Digital Learning + Research at Occidental College offers a two-year Postdoctoral
Fellowship focused on digital scholarship. Thanks to the continued generosity of the Andrew W.
Mellon Foundation, Occidental’s CDLR will be hiring two fellows for terms beginning with the 2014-15
academic year.
Joining a dynamic team of professionals and postdocs, our fellows will be expected to devote time to
teaching and team-teaching, collaborating with CDLR Faculty Fellows on major digital scholarship
projects, advising students, conducting research to stay abreast of developments in digital scholarship,
and generally working as part of the CLDR team dedicated to exploring and integrating digital
scholarship in a liberal arts context. These fellowships are intended to serve as developmental
positions, allowing fellows to prepare for a future career in academia (as faculty or otherwise) as they
are sharing their expertise with the Occidental community. Depending on departmental needs and
each fellow’s interests, fellows will likely have the opportunity to teach in either a first-year seminar
through the College’s Cultural Studies Program, a departmental course, or alongside CDLR Faculty
Fellows in Digital Liberal Arts lab courses. The Center for Digital Learning + Research expects that
fellows will continue to keep up with disciplinary research and professionalization, and will support
these efforts with limited travel funding and dedicated time for projects that explore personal
research interests and are likely to help shape the mission and work of the CDLR. Overall, we are
looking for individuals who thrive in an environment of constantly learning and sharing new concepts,
methods, and tools. Disciplinary specialization is open, but will generally focus on the humanities or
social sciences. Scholars with broad interdisciplinary concerns are strongly encouraged to apply.
Candidates with experience in data visualization, multi-modal scholarly production, code writing, and
active participation in digital scholarship communities will be favored.
Responsibilities:
1. Work with CDLR Faculty Fellows to help develop courses, labs, and digital scholarly projects.
2. Design and develop digital scholarship projects.
Ideally, these projects would be a continuation of your own scholarly work but would integrate
students and faculty at Occidental. Such projects might be developed collaboratively, and could
focus on data visualization, mobile devices, geographic information systems, social media, data
mining, interactive design, or simulation and gaming.
3. Help the College develop a vision of what digital scholarship and digital pedagogy looks like at a
liberal arts institution by teaching innovative courses that can serve as models and participating in
campus-wide discussions about technology and pedagogy.
4. Develop and conduct training sessions, workshops, and/or a speaker series around topics of technopedagogy, new modes of scholarly communication, and related developments in digital scholarship.
5. Help to expand Occidental's network of regional, national, global, and consortial ties.
6. Work with Occidental’s Global Crossroads system, a unique digital platform for academic discourse
7. Help faculty and students take advantage of Occidental’s new Digital Production Studio and maker
space
Occidental's Center for Digital Learning and Research
Operating as a research and design team within the Scholarship Technology group at Occidental
College, the Center for Digital Learning + Research enhances teaching, learning, research, and scholarly
work at Occidental by helping faculty and students integrate these activities with emergent
technologies and services. The CDLR’s Mellon Postdoctoral fellows lead and partner with faculty on
research projects that incorporate advanced technologies, especially on projects that require
technological engagements beyond those services regularly supported by Occidental’s Information
Technology and Instruction + Research groups. The CDLR currently focuses on projects and practices
that experiment with forms of public scholarship, model more open forms of scholarly communication,
or take advantage of new learning spaces.
Occidental College is in Eagle Rock, a neighborhood in the northeastern corner of the City of Los
Angeles. The College offers a unique combination of a rigorous academic program, small size, a diverse
student body, and all the resources of Los Angeles. An interdisciplinary, hands-on approach to the
liberal arts takes place in a close-knit community of excellent teacher-scholars and involved students
that focus on creativity, academic accomplishment, civic engagement and making a difference.
Occidental’s location in a world city on the Pacific Ocean and near the mountains and deserts of
Southern California offers ready access to the broadest array of activities and proximity to
internationally important libraries and museums, not the least of which are the Huntington Library,
the Getty Center, the University of California Los Angeles, the University of Southern California, Cal
Tech, and the Claremont Colleges.
Salary and Benefits:
The Fellow will be considered a regular (12-month) employee of Occidental College with a salary of
$53,000 plus the standard benefits and leave accrued by employees, as well as limited relocation
expense support.
Requirements:
In addition to a letter of interest, which should address how to best foster digital scholarship projects
tied to teaching and learning in the context of a liberal arts college, please include a current CV and
three confidential letters of recommendation. Application Deadline: Application review will begin in
early February and will continue until the positions are filled. For full consideration, please submit
your materials by February 7th. Electronic submissions are preferred, and we understand if letters of
support arrive after letters of interest. We are especially interested in candidates who will have a
degree in hand and can start at Occidental at some point between June 1 and August 1, 2014.
For Submissions and More Information Contact:
Daniel Chamberlain
Director, Center for Digital Learning and Research
Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, CA 90041
chamberlain@oxy.edu
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