Last fall, the college launched four searches for new faculty members as part of the campus-wide Wisconsin Research, Innovation and Scholarly Excellence Initiative (RISE) in the areas of RISE-AI and RISE-EARTH. The RISE program funds new faculty hires through central resources as a match to hires funded by schools and colleges. CALS completed several college-funded hires in RISE themes last academic year which provided the matching funds for hires from these four searches. 

Search and screen committees, composed of faculty from all disciplines in the college, reviewed over 700 applications and conducted 98 Zoom interviews across the four themes. Earlier this month, the college had the last of its 26 on-campus visits with finalists.

The timing of these searches was staggered, so there are a range of accepted, pending and upcoming offers for candidates. Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs Heather White is working closely with selected candidates and chairs of future home departments to extend and finalize offers. Updates on hiring will be included in a future eCALS post.

The search approach used for these RISE hires combined aspects of traditional departmental hires with those of cluster hires to yield a collaborative process. Throughout the process, search and screen members engaged in strong cross-department collaboration on the searches and shared best practices, yielding an unintended but positive side effect.

“We greatly appreciate the collaborative effort it took to make these searches a success. The matching funds from central campus gave us a unique opportunity to think across disciplines, and this approach yielded talented applicants from a variety of backgrounds to move us forward in the strategic areas identified by each theme,” said Associate Dean for Research and Extension Troy Runge. “Members of the search committees worked hard to screen candidates from a variety of fields to find the best fit for each theme, and departments stepped in to host finalists to ensure their campus visit was meaningful. Thank you to everyone who helped with this effort. We look forward to welcoming outstanding new faculty to our academic community.”