University of Victoria Hiring an Assistant Teaching Professor in Social Work

The University of Victoria's School of Social Work is hiring a tenure-track Assistant Teaching Professor to begin July 1, 2027, or as negotiated. The posting closes January 15, 2027, and it contains a condition that deserves closer reading than most job ads get: under the University's Equity Plan and Section 42 of the BC Human Rights Code, selection is limited to Indigenous peoples. Applicants who want to be considered must self-identify in the cover letter, because the committee will open the self-identified Indigenous pool first and only.

The Position Itself

The successful candidate will teach across the School of Social Work's undergraduate and graduate programs, in both on-campus and online delivery. The School runs a Bachelor of Social Work and three master's streams: the foundation programme (MSWF), the advanced programme (MSWA), and the Indigenous specialisation (MSWI). All of them are built around social justice and Indigenous and anti-oppressive approaches to communities, families, and individuals.

The posting asks for someone who can demonstrate decolonization in teaching, research, and community activism, not as a paragraph in a statement but as something visible in the work samples. Teaching interests the School names include transnationalism, critical disability studies, poverty, queer theory, environmental justice, Mad studies, health and racial equity, and Indigenous pedagogy. That is a wide span, and the ad likely expects depth in a few areas rather than coverage of all eight.

Participation in the school's administrative structure is also part of the job. At UVic, teaching-stream faculty carry a standard workload of 70 percent teaching, 20 percent service, and 10 percent scholarly activity. The social work ad itself does not print that split, but the teaching footprint and the explicit mention of administrative work line up with it.

Who May Apply

This is a limited hire restricted to Indigenous peoples. The phrase is not a preference; UVic's policy distinguishes limited hiring sharply from preferential hiring. In a limited hire the search committee reviews only applicants who self-identify with the designated group.

The formal requirements begin with an MSW. Beyond that, the School wants three or more years of social work practice after the BSW or MSW, or three years of practice accompanied by relevant lived experience. The rest of the threshold is about demonstrated experience:

• knowledge and experience of decolonial equity and intersectionality in practice, pedagogy, and epistemology
• teaching experience in undergraduate or graduate programs
• the capacity to explain how one's own pedagogy supports the School's vision and mission
• experience with face-to-face and online or distance education
• commitment to working collaboratively and transparently within the School's objectives

Applicants who are neither Canadian citizens nor permanent residents should state whether they are authorised to work in Canada or willing to apply for authorisation. The posting also encourages candidates to explain any career interruptions that may have affected their record.

What a Limited Hire Means in Practice

UVic's preferential and limited hiring framework rests on policy HR6110 and Section 42 of the BC Human Rights Code. British Columbia's Human Rights Commissioner has approved special-program hiring for Indigenous Peoples, Black people, people with disabilities, racialized people, and women and gender-diverse people. The university's stated reason is that some groups remain under-represented among its workforce despite ordinary fair-hiring efforts.

The distinction between the two mechanisms is simple enough to table:

For this social work search, the listed group is Indigenous peoples, and only the Indigenous applicant pool will be read. The effect is that the self-identification sentence in the cover letter determines whether the file is opened at all.

There is a second, newer layer. UVic's Office of the Vice-President Indigenous has introduced an Indigenous Citizenship Declaration (ICD) policy, GV0810. It exists to affirm declarations of Indigenous citizenship, membership, and belonging where those claims affect material advantages, including employment in an Indigenous-specific position. Shortlisted candidates will be asked to create a NetlinkID and submit a declaration through the ICD Application Portal. At application stage, no action is required beyond preparing for that step. Candidates can read the full policy on the UVic preferential and limited hiring page before applying.

The Teaching-Stream Track at UVic

Teaching-stream faculty at UVic sit under the same Collective Agreement as other faculty and are represented by the UVic Faculty Association. The standard allocation across UVic teaching-stream appointments is 70 percent teaching, 20 percent service, and 10 percent scholarly activity. The Mathematics and Statistics posting for its own Assistant Teaching Professor role spells this out, as do several other current UVic ads. That scholarly slice should not be misread as a holiday from research: in the teaching stream it is more likely to mean curriculum development, pedagogical scholarship, or the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

For this social work role, the teaching load is not specified course-by-course, which is normal at this stage. The successful candidate will teach both graduate and undergraduate courses and help with coordination and administrative responsibilities. Anyone weighing the job against a research-stream professorship should note that the two tracks are not the same shape of work; a teaching-stream appointment asks for repeated, high-volume instructional labour, not a reduced research agenda.

See the Department of Mathematics and Statistics posting for UVic's standard teaching-stream workload language.

Salary and the Omitted Number

The social work posting does not publish a salary range. The listing on AcademicJobs.com flags the same gap. That is unusual for UVic, which now prints ranges in most faculty ads, and it is the single most consequential piece of missing information for an applicant deciding whether to spend a week assembling a dossier.

Recent UVic Assistant Teaching Professor postings provide a rough context. The Mathematics and Statistics tenure-track ATP was advertised at $100,000 to $114,000. The School of Public Health and Social Policy's ATP was listed at $115,000 to $135,000. The Indigenous Education ATP carried a range of $114,000 to $141,000. Those are different faculties with different market pressures, and none of them is a safe proxy for this School of Social Work search. They do establish the band in which UVic places teaching-stream assistant professors.

The standard language in UVic ads says final salary depends on qualifications, experience, and overall market demand, and that the package includes benefits, leaves, and a pension plan. That language persists in this ad, but the number itself does not. A reasonable candidate should ask for the range early. A request for a salary range is not gauche; it is the first piece of basic information a well-run search should have printed in the ad.

For comparison, the School of Public Health and Social Policy ATP posting lists its range. But the social work search's salary remains unpublished.

Assembling the Dossier

The application is an email to swdirect@uvic.ca. The subject line is specific and should be copied exactly: SOCW-Assistant Teaching Professor-2027 Application – Limited Hire. The package has four parts to assemble now, with references deferred until shortlisting.

• current curriculum vitae
• cover letter that covers the full scope of requirements, including a teaching philosophy, an account of how your practice experience informs pedagogy, and concrete evidence of how you have implemented social justice in practice
• two or three samples of teaching materials you have produced, which could mean podcasts, handouts, or one or two syllabi you designed
• evaluations of teaching from the most recent courses taught

A teaching-stream CV is not a research CV with a few course titles typed at the end. The committee is trying to decide whether you can carry seven or more courses a year, coordinate multi-section teaching, and still produce scholarship. That requires the dossier to be legible as evidence, not assertion. Our internal article on writing a winning academic CV may help. The university also asks candidates to self-identify in the cover letter; no self-identification means no review.

Shortlisted candidates will be invited to submit three references. In a limited hire with an Indigenous-designated position, applicants should also begin gathering any documentation the Indigenous Citizenship Declaration policy may require, even though the portal step happens later. Delays there can stall an otherwise strong file.

Timeline and Practical Questions

The posting will remain open until January 15, 2027, and review of applications begins soon after. The start date is July 1, 2027, or as negotiated, which usually means the university can move the date by mutual agreement rather than offering a blank check on leave.

International candidates must state their work authorisation status. Persons with disabilities who anticipate needing accommodation during any part of the process can contact Faculty Relations and Academic Administration at FRrecruit@uvic.ca; the university says personal information received will be held in confidence.

The university sits on the lək̓ʷəŋən peoples' territory, on whose traditional lands UVic stands, and has close relationships with local Songhees, Esquimalt, and WSÁNEĆ communities. Its Indigenous Plan sets commitments around decolonising the campus both inside and outside the classroom, and the School of Social Work describes itself as committed to centering Indigenous scholarship, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit experiences.

That context matters because this hiring process is not independent of it; the limited-hire mechanism, the Citizenship Declaration, and the decolonizing language in the ad are all part of the same institutional conversation.

What the Ad Leaves Open

The remaining unknowns are practical. The ad does not say how many courses will be taught each year, how many sections, or how much of the teaching is online. It does not state a salary range. It does not say whether shortlisting will happen in February or whether campus visits are remote for remote candidates.

The biggest unknown is salary. UVic has become more transparent about pay across its advertised faculty positions, and this posting's silence is the outlier rather than the rule. That missing figure is not a small thing; it determines whether the relocation, the Victoria housing market, and the teaching load add up. The question the ad does not answer is whether the omission was deliberate or an administrative slip. A serious applicant should ask before assembling the dossier, not after.