ºüÀêÊÓƵ University announced Monday that it is making a large wave of new teaching hires, adding 20 faculty members focused on “geospatial science and related fields†over the next three years.
The move comes through the school’s partnership with the Taylor Geospatial Institute — the SLU-based research center launched last year with the backing of the local scions of Enterprise Mobility, the rental car giant. The school said the “ambitious†hiring initiative will bring in new faculty members who apply geospatial technology and research to a broad mix of fields, such as climate science, agriculture, national security and even health care.
“Hiring 20 faculty is a big deal,†said Vasit Sagan, the vice president for geospatial science at SLU, and the deputy director of the Taylor Geospatial Institute. Civic and economic leaders have sought in recent years to establish ºüÀêÊÓƵ as a hub and national leader for geospatial technology.
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The technology has many valuable behind-the-scenes applications, from helping enable mobile communication, ride-sharing by Lyft or Uber, and tracking for packages, Sagan said — and ultimately powering $1 trillion in global business built around positioning, navigation and timing.
The move will dramatically expand SLU’s current stable of experts in the field. The school presently has about six to eight “core†geospatial faculty members, although dozens more are users of geospatial tools, Sagan said.
The announcement also marks the first “cluster†hire in the school’s history, said Maggie Rotermund, a university spokeswoman.
The blueprint for the hiring spree took shape after officials with SLU and the Taylor Geospatial Institute tried to identify national gaps in expertise and then tailored the new positions to fill them, Sagan said.
“We did our homework in terms of, ‘Where is the technology going?’†he said. “Those positions are strategically designed for up-and-coming, future technologies.â€
The open positions will be spread across multiple academic departments at the university. Sagan expects that establishing strength in the field can anchor the school’s ability to attract a “significant†number of students moving forward.
Although SLU said its new positions would be filled over a three-year period, it appears that many are already open and aim to be filled by the start of the next academic year. The Taylor Geospatial Institute’s website, for instance, lists more than a dozen geospatial job openings at SLU, plus others at the University of Missouri-ºüÀêÊÓƵ and other regional schools involved with its work.
Ramping up geospatial academic offerings at SLU and other local institutions would closely match up with the growth of the field in the region, particularly as the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency prepares for its highly anticipated move into new and expanded facilities in north ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
The NGA’s new $1.7 billion and nearly 100-acre campus is scheduled to open in 2025.