Cluster Hire Initiative

Issues in Rurality: Disparity and Difference

Idaho State University seeks to bolster its existing community of researchers, scholars, clinicians and artists invested in addressing issues related to rurality through a cluster hire involving several disciplines across the institution.  We are especially interested in identifying candidates whose work addresses difference and disparity in such spaces.  As a regional comprehensive university as well as the state’s designated health sciences institution, ISU occupies a unique space from which to host such a community of interdisciplinary faculty whose interests, research, art, and clinical practice can help further our collective understanding of the unique dynamics impacting rural spaces.  This initiative will support the current leadership role that ISU plays for other state institutions serving similar rural communities, as well as further ISU’s emergent regional and national prominence.

Idaho State University enjoys a mandate to serve a population of students from rural, suburban, and urban areas.  As such, we are committed to understanding the distinct needs and phenomena impacting the people, environments, industry, and society of our service region.  The faculty engaged in this cluster hire initiative will ideally work closely with ISU students as well as local and regional populations -- including the indigenous peoples and significant Latinx population which make up approximately 20% of various Idaho counties  -- in seeking to understand and address the aforementioned needs and phenomenon.  Hires in areas as diverse as the College of Health, College of Pharmacy, College of Business, College of Education, College of Arts and Letters, and College of Technology are anticipated.

Faculty hired through this initiative serve within existing departments/programs connected to their specific discipline, but will also participate in the interdisciplinary working group associated with this hire.  With the support and involvement of Academic Affairs and college leadership, this working group will identify key goals related to the cluster which will be supported centrally.  Given our commitment to community engagement and engaged scholarship we seek to appoint faculty who are deeply committed to being embedded in the communities they study and serve.