Department Chairs: Trends and Issues Over Time
Spoiler alert: people are serving in the role of department chair for fewer years than in the past. Since 2007, my colleague Richard Riccardi and I have yearly surveyed department chairs across the country in an effort to better understand and appreciate the prominent characteristics of this distinct and unique position. More specifically we were interested in seeking information regarding their tenure, the rank they hold, if they considered themselves a member of the faculty or the administration, the pleasant and unpleasant tasks they perform, their education and training for the position of chair, the skills needed to be an effective chair, the challenges they face, their plans after they are no longer chair, and their thoughts about collegiality. It is interesting to be able to determine if there were significant changes over the 12-years of the study.
Peacemaking 101
You are the chair of a department of six full-time faculty members. You have been chair for three years, are tenured, and hold the rank of full professor. Four of your faculty members are tenured, three hold the rank of associate professor, and one, Dr. Bill Dudas, is a full professor. One faculty member, Dr. Amanda Thompson, is a tenure-track assistant professor in her fourth year at the university. You consider Thompson your most valuable and productive faculty member. She is a master teacher, a great scholar with many databased articles published in highly regarded journals, and on five university committees as well as three key committees in the department. She is project director for a US Department of Education five-year grant to fund students in the department’s master’s degree program.
The Department Chair: A Retrospective Perspective
The department chair is a linchpin of a university. It has been estimated that 80 percent of the decisions made in higher education are made at the department level. The chair is a classic hybrid-in-the-middle position; not really an administrator but “more than” a faculty member. The roles and responsibilities of a chair can differ significantly from one university to another.
Collegiality Incentivized
Traditionally a person in higher education is hired as an assistant professor. After an agreed-upon number of years, usually six, she or he is either tenured (aka, the Holy Grail of higher education) or terminated. At this time, the person also applies for promotion to the rank of associate professor. Of course, he or she is highly motivated to attain tenure and promotion in rank. This motivation to teach well, produce scholarly research, and have an enviable record of providing service to the department, school, university, and community is logically self-evident: the reward of tenure and promotion. The same reward-incentive system is in place when, after a number of years, this associate professor is rewarded with the rank of full professor. The person is rewarded based on how well she or he meets standards of teaching, scholarship, and service. However, of equal importance to the overall effectiveness of a person’s worth to a department is how she or he interacts with colleagues. If a person is downright nasty, unwilling to collaborate with colleagues, does not do a fair share of the work, and is consistently toxic to students, peers, and staff, should that person be rewarded with tenure and promotion in rank?
