Founded in 1863, Boston College is a Jesuit, Catholic university located six miles from downtown Boston with an enrollment of 9,484 full-time undergraduates and 5,250 graduate and professional students.  Ranked 35 among national universities, Boston College has 888 full-time and 1,281 FTE faculty, 2,711 non-faculty employees, an operating budget of $1.4 billion, and an endowment in excess of $3.5 billion.

Job Description

Postdoctoral Research Fellow - Engineering
Competitive salary commensurate with relevant experience.

We invite applicants for a postdoctoral fellow position in the Department of Engineering at Boston College. The department is responsible for the new undergraduate Human-Centered engineering program which welcomed its first cohort of students in Fall 2021. The program integrates Boston College's core liberal arts curriculum with experiential engineering curriculum that emphasizes societal responsibility.

The fellow will work with Dr. Avneet Hira primarily on the NSF funded project: CAREER: Engineering in Youth-led Technology-rich Settings: Promoting Belonging and Preventing Harm. The project has two primary goals: Goal 1: To support youth in leading explorations of how technology use and creation can support a sense of belonging in engineering. Goal 2: To develop a framework along with youth that centers preventing harm to people and the environment when engineering. This project is motivated by a lack of sense of belonging that youth from minoritized groups often experience in informal engineering spaces and the inadvertent gatekeeping behaviors of coordinators of such spaces. The postdoctoral fellow will be involved in research implementation including data collection, analysis and dissemination, project management, and developing partnerships.

The fellow will have a PhD in engineering education, science education, learning sciences, science and technology studies, or any other relevant field. They should have expertise in research design appropriate to the study described above, ideally with a focus on qualitative narrative-based and participatory methods. Frequent travel to or re-location to the Boston area will be needed.

Candidates interested in interrogating questions pertaining to engineering in open-ended project-based settings like Makerspaces, museums, community organizations, and family units are strongly encouraged to apply. While the fellow will spend most of their time conducting research and working on manuscripts, there may be opportunities for teaching, mentoring and grant writing if there is interest.

This is a 1-year appointment with the possibility for renewal.
For questions, please contact Avneet Hira at avneet.hira@bc.edu

Requirements

Closing Statement

Boston College offers a broad and competitive range of benefits depending on your job classification eligibility:

• Tuition remission for Employees
• Tuition remission for Spouses and Children who meet eligibility requirements
• Generous Medical, Dental, and Vision Insurance
• Low-Cost Life Insurance
• Eligibility for both University-Funded 401k and Employer-Sponsored 403b Retirement Plans
• Paid Holidays Annually
• Generous Sick and Vacation Pay
• Additional benefits can be found on https://www.bc.edu/employeehandbook

Boston College conducts pre-employment background checks as part of the hiring process.  Boston College is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer. In concert with our Jesuit, Catholic mission, Boston College is dedicated to the goal of building a culturally diverse and pluralistic faculty and staff committed to teaching and working in a multicultural environment and strongly encourages applications for women, minorities, individuals with disabilities, and covered veterans. To learn more about how BC supports diversity and inclusion throughout the university please visit the Office for Institutional Diversity at https://www.bc.edu/offices/diversity .

Boston College's Notice of Nondiscrimination can be viewed at https://www.bc.edu/nondiscrimination .