University of Calgary

Academic Openings in Religious Studies

 

Why choose Calgary?

The University of Calgary is a major Canadian research university in a thriving city of about 1 million people. The Department of Religious Studies has a very good international reputation, and offers a very collegial work environment, with exciting opportunities in both teaching and research. It offers full undergraduate and graduate programs (M.A., Ph.D.).

The regular teaching load is four courses per year. The language of instruction is English. At Calgary, the Fall and Winter terms are each 13 weeks long and run from mid-September to mid-April, leaving over four months per year without regular teaching duties.




Working at the University of Calgary

Cost of Living - The "Alberta Advantage"

Alberta has the lowest personal income tax rates in Canada, no provincial sales tax, and a very reasonable cost-of-living. In the August 17, 1999 issue of the National Post the following overall comparisons were provided. For each city, the first figure gives the ratio of total taxes to total income, including private health care costs. The second figure is the Tax Burden combined with the Cost of Living Factor, which is a composite index of five major categories of expenditures (housing, utilities, consumables, transportation and other services).

Tax Burden and Cost of Living
in Various Canadian Cities for $50,000 Income

Calgary31%27%
Montreal42%41%
Ottawa36%32%
Toronto36%36%
Vancouver37%50%

Figures are a percentage of income and Toronto is the base city. Source: The Conference Board of Canada, The Canadian Tax Foundation, CCH and the National Post.

As an example, these figures suggest that an individual earning $50,000 per year in Vancouver who moves to Alberta would, with the same income, gain about $11,500 per year in after tax purchasing power (i.e., the reduction in burden = 0.5*50,000 – 0.27*50,000).

 

 

Salary, Benefits, Relocation Expenses

The University of Calgary offers competitive salaries (see "schedule A") and benefits. The system of annual merit increments in effect at Calgary is described in the GPC manual--very briefly, salaries are increased biennially by merit increment which depends on faculty member's assessment and rank (roughly between $1000 and $3000 per year). This is on top of negotiated across-the-board salary increases.

The generous tenure policy in effect at Calgary bears emphasizing: Faculty members are eligible for a semester's leave at 80% of salary for every three years of service. (Compare this with sabbatical leave programs in many US universities, which typically only provide 50-65% of salary).

 

Research Support (for tenure-track faculty)

The Department and the University encourage faculty to apply for federal research funding, especially through SSHRC. However, the Faculty of Arts and the University also offer several attractive funding opportunities, including start-up funding (agreed upon in the letter of offer for the first year, for the second year, URGC Start Up Grants of up to $10,000 are available--all recent tenure track hires have been successful in URGC competitions). The University also offers conference travel grants and several fellowships, including Fellowships at the Calgary Instuitute for the Humanities. Each permanent faculty member also has an annual Professional Expense Allowance of $1,500 ($150 per half-course for Sessional Instructors).

 

Living in Calgary

The city of Calgary sits in rolling foothills about an hour's drive east of Banff National Park in the Rocky Mountains. With a population of over 1,000,000, Calgary is the largest Canadian city between Vancouver and Toronto. It is also the youngest Canadian city, with a median age of 34, the fastest growing Canadian city, and Calgarians have the highest average personal income of any city in Canada. Calgary is known for its entrepreneurial spirit, energy, multicultural nature, and highly educated workforce. It has an excellent symphony, an opera, is home to the Alberta Ballet, and offers a lively independent music and art scene, numerous professional dance and theater companies: Calgary has annual Film, Fringe (theater), Folk festivals, as well as the acclaimed annual High Performance Rodeo (theater and dance). Opportunities for outdoor recreation (skiing, camping, hiking, fishing, biking, kayaking, and canoeing) are world-class, both around Calgary and in the nearby Rockies. Thanks to the infrastructure improvements for the 1988 Olympic Games, Calgary also has a good public transportation system--many of our faculty take the C-Train to work. The Calgary International Airport has several daily non-stop connections to all major Canadian cities, to many Western and Mid-Western US airline hubs (e.g., Chicago, LAX, San Francisco, Seattle, Salt Lake City, Houston, Denver, and Minneapolis), to New York, and daily international direct flights to Frankfurt, Paris, and London.

Worried about the weather?

Although Calgary, like most Canadian cities, has cold winters, there are several features of the climate in Calgary that make the winters really not so bad. Calgary is generally dry, and this also applies to snowfall (Calgary: 126cm per year; Montreal: 226cm). Alberta is also very sunny overall, and Calgary in particular is known for its blue skies. In fact, November through January you'll get more than twice as much sunshine in Calgary as you would in Vancouver (in January: 113 hours of bright sun in Calgary; 55 hours in Vancouver). January is the coldest month, with an average daily maximum temperature of -3C/27F (for comparison: Edmonton -8C/17F, Montreal -6C/21F; Toronto -2C/28F). Warm mountain winds known as Chinooks can raise the temperature by as much as 20C in a day, and although we do get cold spells, they rarely last longer than a week before a Chinook brings Spring-like temperatures.

 

(*Copied with permission from the Department of Philosophy website.)

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