Heads and Chairs
"I have always found it fascinating that an institution dedicated to training professionals to assume positions of leadership in society does absolutely nothing to train its own leaders in the essential skills." (Feiss, 2005)
When you find yourself in a position of leadership for which you have received no training, the following resources may help you navigate the waters.
Strategic Planning
A strong department has a unified vision and a plan for achieving it. Here's why and how to lead your department in developing a vision and implementing a plan.
Recruiting and Retaining Faculty
Finding and keeping high quality faculty is a major concern for every department. Here are resources describing successful strategies.
Managing a Department
As the head or chair of a department, it is your job to prepare budgets, allocate resources, help resolve problems, evaluate your colleagues, and more. The resources here can help.Additional Resources
- The Department Chair Online Resource Center is a treasure trove of information and advice.
- The Academic Leader is an online newsletter for academic deans and department chairs.
- Hitting the Ground Running: Making Strategic Changes is a posting from "Tomorrow's Professor" that describes changes made by a new chair in several areas and the results. It is food for thought for anyone about to become chair who sees room for department-level changes.
- Learning to Lead is a posting from "Tomorrow's Professor" that focuses on some of the important things to pay attention to in the first three-six months as a new department chair. In particular, it addresses a few key behaviors that lead to success as a faculty member but may lead to failure as a chair.
- Departments that Work: Building and Sustaining Cultures of Excellence in Academic Programs focuses on how academic programs can make evaluation more useful and critical reflection more likely.
- Read the 2001 Report on the Status of Geoscience Departments from the American Geological Institute to learn about geoscience enrollments and degrees granted, employment trends of recent graduates, faculty ranks, faculty teaching specialties, geoscience theses and dissertation topics, research funding support, and geoscience employment by employer category, age distribution, and gender distribution.
