A Mindfulness Checkup for Your Use of Email
Department heads communicate in a wide variety of ways. Even as offices have adopted tools such as instant messaging, email is still a mainstay—love it or hate it. Email can be an efficient way for department heads to transmit information to individuals or groups, even across geographical locations and time...
Global out of the Gate: Student Outcomes and Long-Term Successes
The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) includes global and intercultural fluency in its eight Career Readiness Competencies, and yet in its latest survey (2019), employers rated college graduate readiness in this area as 3.13 out of 5. Although international virtual exchange (IVE) has been used by some universities...
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...
Improving Support for Non-Tenure-Track Faculty
Academic administrators are well aware that the faculty has changed dramatically, with 70 percent of the faculty now off the tenure track (52 percent part-time and 18 percent full-time, non–tenure track) (American Association of University Professors, 2018). This transformation of academic positions over the past three decades has created an...
On the Growth and Value of Interdisciplinary Studies
In fall 2016, there were 61 undergraduate students majoring in interdisciplinary studies at our university. By the fall of 2020, that number had risen to 315. This spring the program lists 460 majors. During the entire 2016–2017 academic year, we saw 55 students graduate with a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary...
Dealing with Negativity and Conflict
During my 11-year tenure as a department head, it became clear to me that most of us enter administration because we are optimistic individuals who want to help our academic units to grow and develop, change with the times, and thrive despite obstacles. We see our faculty and our budgets...
Let’s Start from the Very Beginning: Implicit Bias Conversations for Faculty Search Committees
There is a great deal of discussion in higher education about how to create diverse, equitable, and inclusive campuses. Tufts is not unique in its desire to diversify its faculty to better mirror the student population. One challenge in achieving this goal is implicit bias—that is, attitudes or stereotypes that...
Exhaustion’s Toll on the Next Generation of Female Academic Leaders
I’m sure you have seen the articles describing the decrease in women’s submissions to top research journals since the pandemic began in the spring (e.g., Flaherty, 2020, Viglione, 2020). The media has also been full of stories about the toll that working from home is taking on those who have...
Using Authentic Assignments to Assess Student Learning
As an administrator, I often ask myself whether learning has taken place—although my language may be a little more colorful. I want to avoid wasting my student’s time and effort, and even more so, I really do want to make sure that my students have learned something. In addition to...
