The booth went dark a beat before it should have. A student at the lighting console had hit the wrong cue, and for three seconds the only sound in the theatre was a stage manager's pencil tapping. The instructor leaned over, not to grab the mouse, but to ask what the cue was supposed to do. By the end of dress rehearsal, the student had rebuilt the sequence herself and written a note about why the timing drifted.
That kind of teaching moment is behind a new search at Wichita State University. The public university in Wichita, Kansas, has posted an opening for an Assistant Teaching Professor/Educator of Performing Arts with a specialty in lighting and sound, and a projection design practice woven through both. The non-tenure-track appointment sits in the university's College of Fine Arts and School of Performing Arts, and applications move through Wichita State's online jobs portal.
What the search actually asks for
The job title pairs three different words: lighting and sound, plus projection. In a modern production program they sit close together. The role is designed for someone who can teach students to think in light cues, run a sound board with clean gain structure, and build media that lands on a cyc or a set wall without fighting the actors for attention.
Applicants should expect a teaching-focused contract. While the full announcement on the university's jobs page sets out specific course loads and production duties, positions like this generally combine undergraduate instruction with hands-on support for department productions. That mix is the point: students learn best when the person grading the cue sheet also knows what a failed projector looks like at 7 p.m. before opening night. The College of Fine Arts houses several performing arts degree programs, and the position is listed as an educator of performing arts rather than as a single-discipline designer. The person hired will move between the classroom and the shop, then to the tech table in ways a purely lecture-based line would not. Faculty in this area also help maintain production equipment, coordinate with guest designers, and sometimes supervise student crews during load-in and strike.
Why projection design changed the job
Projection is the reason a posting for a lighting and sound educator now reads differently than it would have in 2005. Digital media has moved from occasional effect to core scenic environment. A production can be driven by video content in ways that once belonged only to paint and masking. The software tools have become more common. QLab has become a standard cueing tool. Isadora and Resolume appear in university tech booths as well, and the names matter less than the underlying habit of treating video as a controllable, cued instrument.
None of this means the old fundamentals go away. A student still needs to learn how to hang and focus an instrument, how to ring out a monitor wedge, and how to coil a cable so it doesn't knot. What changes is that these tasks now happen alongside media servers and pixel mapping, with video mapping to irregular surfaces. The United States Institute for Theatre Technology has expanded training and networking for educators who teach media and projection alongside traditional stagecraft, a reflection of how standard the work has become.
The wider market for technical theatre educators
The search at Wichita State is not happening in a vacuum. Colleges with production programs have to compete for faculty who can also work in commercial live events or broadcast, and who may spend weeks on touring productions. That competition pushes some departments toward non-tenure-track appointments that let working designers keep a professional practice. It also makes the hiring process more specific: a department may need someone who can teach a lighting design studio, but it will usually look for evidence that the same person can handle a sound console when a technician is out sick or a media server when a show adds video cues.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Arts and Design Occupations pages offer a broad view of the field; production roles vary widely by market and by whether someone works in education or across theatre and live events. Search committees tend to read those categories loosely when a strong candidate shows up with a mix of design and teaching credits. For technical theatre educators, the line between an academic search and a professional hiring call has blurred, and that works in favour of candidates who can teach from a working portfolio.
What a non-tenure-track line means in practice
Non-tenure-track doesn't mean short-term or second-class in every department, and performing arts programs have their own logic. A working lighting designer or production engineer can teach stage systems on Tuesday and then load a touring show on Friday. The teaching professor title gives a college a way to hire that person without making them publish research or sit through the same tenure clock as a literature professor.
The American Association of University Professors has documented the national shift toward contingent and non-tenure-track appointments; the majority of US faculty now work outside the tenure system. For applicants who have built careers in regional theatre or on festival circuits, and for those who have spent years in live event production, that reality can be less discouraging than it sounds. It can mean a clearer path into a teaching job that values recent production credits. Wichita's own production economy helps. Wichita State University sits in a city with a steady regional theatre and live event scene, which gives designers and technicians another reason to keep working while they teach. For a closer look at how those teaching-focused contracts work, academicjobs.com has a guide on becoming a university lecturer that explains routes and salary conversations, plus common contract terms.
For the person considering applying
Read the announcement before you read anything else. The course load and production season are in the public posting, along with whether the appointment is renewable. Those details matter more than the title. Then decide which part of your portfolio tells the real story. A lighting plot is good; a video clip of a projection gag you designed that survived a quick change is better. Universities want evidence that you can teach the thing you design, not just that you can design it.
Prepare for a teaching demonstration that feels like a technical rehearsal. You may be asked to explain a signal path, walk a student through a board patch, or troubleshoot a dead channel. Speak in plain terms. If you have worked in a union house or a warehouse stage, say so; regional theatre experience is part of the credential here. The full announcement and application form are on Wichita State's jobs portal.
Before you submit, gather the material that search committees actually open:
- Your latest CV with production credits, teaching experience, and the software platforms you have taught.
- A portfolio or work sample that shows the design choice in context, not just the final polished frame.
- Names of two or three professional references who have watched you troubleshoot in real time.
- A short answer for how you would support a student who has never touched a console.
One student, rehearsing through the transition
The student in the booth won't read the job posting. She will notice the difference in the room. A good hire means she learns to call a cue sequence before it becomes a panic. A less committed one means she inherits bad habits that take years to unlearn.
What would she want from the search committee? Someone who asks her not just 'Is the light on?' but 'What is the light doing?' The rest of the decision belongs to the people who can answer that question in the interview.