Dos and Don’ts for Prospective Department Chairs
Have you ever considered becoming a head of an academic department? If the answer is yes, what follows should give you plenty of useful information. If the answer is maybe, it can help you make the decision. Even if the answer is no, it might change your mind. Let us...
Leading by Example and Modifying Our Approach
I was recently watching the Emmy-winning HBO series Succession, and something one of the characters expressed struck a chord with me. Roman Roy, one of the heirs to a media conglomerate dominated by television news, expressed the need for movement to newer forms of media because people want information in...
How to Talk to Faculty Who Receive Low Course Evaluations
This article is the second installment on conversations about course ratings. The first installment explored how to frame a discussion with a faculty member who receives average ratings semester after semester. This second scenario may be the most challenging for department chairs. It’s the conversation that needs to occur with a faculty...
Understanding Course Evaluations: Resources for Faculty and Chairs
Despite a great deal of research on course evaluations, institutional policies and practices are not always well informed by that research. Faculty are often not as informed as they should be either. Anecdotal evidence, myth and folklore tend to prevail. It’s good to encourage faculty to learn more about how...
Seven Key Questions for Improving Communication with Your Dean
Being a department head is one of the hardest jobs on campus. Representing both the unit and the administration can be a real balancing act, and your most vital partner in this complex role is likely to be your dean. New department heads may never have worked closely with the...
The Departmental Gestalt: Fostering Student Major Identity and Program Pride
This article first appeared in Academic Leader on September 4, 2020 © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. Like many others in the trenches of academia, we’ve chaired, taught, and advised in a small, understaffed, underfunded, and oversubscribed program. While other understaffed and oversubscribed departments limped along, ours notably thrived, resulting in strong...
Dear Reluctant Administrator: You’ve Got This
Colleges and universities differ from most other organizations in that not everyone longs to be in charge. At corporations, government agencies, and even non-profits, staff members all seem intent on clawing their way up the ladder, while the intrigue within a typical homeowner’s association or youth sports league might shock...
The Department Chair as the Engine of Diversity Transformation
The academic department chair is positioned to be the engine of change in diversity progress in higher education today. Serving at the core of the academic enterprise, chairs work collaboratively with faculty to empower students with the needed skills, knowledge, and competencies to participate as leaders and citizens in a...
When Faculty Overreact to Course Ratings
So far in this series on end-of-course ratings we have discussed how to frame a conversation with a faculty member who receives average ratings semester after semester and how to have a productive conversation with faculty who receives low evaluations. The final end-of-course ratings conversation that merits consideration is the exchange that...
Follow-up Budget Questions for New Chairs: Flexibility, Carry Over, and Incentives, Part II
Incentives in the Budgeting System After the first two questions posed in a previous article on budgeting and finance, namely identifying the sources of academic income and how the department’s budget is established, have been answered, the new chair should quickly align the answers to see if the department’s budget...
