Special Faculty Advisor to the Provost for Moffett Field & Director of Aerospace Program Development - 2020

Call for Nominations: Special Faculty Advisor to the Provost for Moffett Field Development & Director of Aerospace Program Development

The Provost invites nominations (including self-nominations) for the position of Special Faculty Advisor to the Provost for Moffett Field Development & Director of Aerospace Program Development. Faculty members from any department on campus who have a (full) Professor appointment are eligible to serve in this role. Nominations (including self-nominations) should be submitted by email to evcp@berkeley.edu no later than May 1, 2020.

Background
At the invitation of NASA, the Berkeley campus is pursuing a possible development of a 36-acre parcel at Moffett Field, home of the NASA Ames Research Center. In the fall semester, a faculty steering group evaluated the academic opportunity for Berkeley at this Silicon Valley site and found the effort to have extraordinary potential. This spring, UC Berkeley negotiated the terms of a ground lease with NASA and built a public-private coalition that would finance construction at the site without deploying University funding. Despite substantial economic concerns from COVID-19, our development partners, with whom the campus will form a joint venture, view this project on a multi-decadal timescale and remain enthusiastic about the opportunity and their own capacity to execute the project even through an economic downturn. We will proceed cautiously, and with the confidence that UC Berkeley has and will continue to thrive even in the most challenging times.

In addition to looking at the Moffett Field opportunity, the faculty steering group identified aerospace science and engineering as a prime area of opportunity for Berkeley to grow—a multidisciplinary field that makes sense for Berkeley to pursue whether or not the Moffett Field development proceeds.  This could take many forms, including new multidisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs, industrially-sponsored research, and expansion in Berkeley’s extraordinarily successful research programs with NASA through the Space Sciences Laboratory.

The Special Faculty Advisor will support these twin objectives, as described below.

Special Faculty Advisor to the Provost for Moffett Field & Director of Aerospace Program Development
The Special Faculty Advisor will work to advance campus-wide strategic planning for academic programs and industrial partnerships at Moffett Field for development in the public interest. The Special Faculty Advisor is responsible for supporting the Provost in defining the overall operation and strategic directions of the site and programs. Working with the campus academic community and other UC partners, the Special Faculty Advisor will work to ensure that the joint venture provides UC with teaching and research capabilities that advance the University’s mission, enhancing partnership opportunities with NASA and industrial research partners. A major thrust of this effort is anticipated to be facilitating exploration and potential establishment of academic programs programs in Aerospace. The Special Faculty Advisor will support this specific effort in concert with leadership representing the Academic Senate and UC Berkeley’s colleges, schools, and departments. 

During the site pre-development and development phases, which are slated to take several years, the Special Faculty Advisor will coordinate closely with a small project team and our joint-venture partners to ensure that the Moffett Field project supports Berkeley’s academic and research missions, particularly through recruitment of industry partners who seek to co-locate and cooperate with UC Berkeley. With a secondary title of Director of Aerospace Program Development, the Special Faculty Advisor will also be charged with helping secure external financial resources to fund an initial faculty cluster hire and requisite infrastructure to support academic programs both on campus and at Moffett Field. 

Once the UCB development at Moffett Field is operational, the Special Faculty Advisor could be invited to continue to have overall strategic, academic, and operational stewardship responsibilities for the program and will serve as the program’s primary academic liaison to prospective industry partners and the UC research and teaching community. Campus will reassess the position, title, compensation, and organizational structure at this stage. 

The Special Faculty Advisor will also participate in securing major industrial, philanthropic, and federal program and infrastructure support and will seek new ways for basic and applied research to be quickly and effectively transferred to industry, assuring that the site continues to contribute to the economic competitiveness of the nation. 

This role may evolve considerably as the program and site launches.

Nomination Process
Nominations (including self-nominations) should be submitted by email to evcp@berkeley.edu no later than May 1, 2020. Nominators should outline the nominee’s qualifications for the role in a statement of no more than 500 words and provide a current CV. Nominators have the option to provide supplemental professional material created by the nominee for the Provost to consider in making the selection.

Appointment and Compensation

  • This appointment is at-will, made at the sole discretion of the Provost, and may be revoked at any time at the discretion of the Provost without stated cause.

  • An initial appointment will be made for one year, renewable at the discretion of the Provost.

  • This is a 50% FTE position and central campus funding will be provided for course relief to the home department(s) of the Special Faculty Advisor selected for this position.

  • The campus will provide a $20k/year administrative stipend, prorated to the beginning of the month in which service commences and to the end of the month in which service concludes.