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...
Creating Space, Relieving Stress, and Making the Job More Enticing
One downside of the chair position, aside from the heavy workload, is that it leaves little time to do the work that they originally joined the academy to do—research and individual scholarship. Yet, at the same time, a strong majority of those contributing to these surveys indicate that they are...
Succession Planning for Academic Leaders
Every academic leader should have a succession plan. A good leadership succession plan provides a way for the college or university to reconsider how it performs core functions and maintains suitable progress while taking the steps necessary to secure its long-term future.
The Failing Student and the Adjunct Professor
Adjunct faculty members indicated they inflated students’ grades in order to help ensure they would receive positive student evaluations, that these students would register for another class they taught. Is the increasing use of adjunct faculty behind grade inflation?
Starting a Pedagogy Book Club
One simple way of creating a forum conducive to professional development among faculty is the establishment of a pedagogy book club.
Promoting Work-Life Satisfaction
Whether it’s caring for a child or an ailing parent, participating in community activities, or pursuing a hobby, faculty members have and deserve lives beyond work. Formal policies, which vary across disciplines, are important, and academic leaders should actively promote such policies and programs because they can significantly affect faculty...
Civility on Campus: A Controversy Over Being Nice
There is a strong relationship between workplace civility climate and employee attitudes and experiences. Research on workplace incivility has clearly demonstrated that employees and organizations experience detrimental outcomes from experiencing and witnessing such mistreatment.
The Academic Leader’s Role in Promoting Inclusive Excellence
What atmosphere are you creating at work? Institutional polices form a threshold for promoting access and equity, but it’s up to academic leaders to create an environment in which people feel creative, productive, and engaged—an idea known as inclusive excellence.
When Academic Leadership Comes with Baggage
The baggage we bring to work with us can take a variety of forms. It could occur because we applied for our positions as internal candidates and suddenly find ourselves as bosses of the very people who only a short time ago we regarded as close friends. It could occur...
Developing a New Faculty-Evaluation System
At Georgia College & State University, each academic unit was tasked in 2011 with developing a new faculty-evaluation system. We were instructed to create an instrument that had both qualitative and quantitative components. It took a year of discussion, compromise, and eventual consensus, but we finally moved forward with a...
