Creating a Strong Chair-Dean Partnership: What Chairs Can Do from Their End (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this two-part series on strengthening the relationship between chairs and deans, we discussed prioritizing student success and satisfaction, capitalizing on the institution’s greatest investment—the faculty— and developing a vision that goes beyond departmental considerations. Here we will continue with three additional points detailing what a chair...
Creating a Strong Chair-Dean Partnership: What Chairs Can Do from Their End (Part 1)
In viewing the organizational structure of our colleges and universities, there is a common hierarchy of faculty, chairs, deans, and higher administration that includes a president or campus leader and may include a provost or the equivalent. Much has been written about the interaction of chairs with their faculty. Inherent...
Auditing Diversity: Academic Leadership’s Instrumental Role
In an era of rapid demographic change in the U.S. population coupled with declining demand for higher education, many colleges and universities are grappling with the urgent need to attract and retain diverse student, faculty, and staff populations and provide an inclusive learning, living, and working environment on campus. Such...
How to Manage Your Email Inbox
How much time do you waste scrolling through your inbox looking for that certain email that contains essential information you need right away? If you follow Keith Krieger’s advice, the answer is none. Krieger, technical training program director at Johnson County Community College, advocates managing email messages to minimize the...
5 Tips on Closing Programs
There comes a time in the life of an academic program when it is no longer viable due to dropping enrollments, lack of faculty resources, budget cuts, changing external contexts, or other factors. When the decision is made to close a program, the department chair’s attention to planning will be...
Checklists: An Academic Leadership Tool
There are probably few tools we can use in academic leadership that seem less interesting than a checklist. But as Atul Gawande argued in The Checklist Manifesto (2010), checklists aren’t an excuse for mindlessness; they’re a recognition of how complex our lives have become. It’s the humble checklist that keeps us safe...
Student Retention: An International Perspective
On a two-week recruitment trip to China and Japan, I asked our university partners in both countries how they addressed problems of retention. In both cases, my question elicited a blank look. Upon further questioning, I realized that retention is not the same type of challenge we experience at US...
