HEADS UP

Advice to a New Department Chair

No matter how reluctantly you took the job, no one forced you to accept it

Article tools

Printer friendly	E-mail article	Subscribe	Order reprints
	Discuss any Chronicle article in our forums
Latest Headlines The Fund Raiser Fund Raising in a Recession It may sound counterintuitive, but now is the time to travel to your best donors and talk about their philanthropic goals. First Person From Job Candidate to Stalker For a new Ph.D. searching for her first job in her field, the line between the two can be blurry. Career News Keep Up the Quality It's time for colleges and universities to improve academic, not just administrative, productivity. On Course Back to High School In a new book, an assistant professor of English finds radical new sources of inspiration for his discipline in K-12 classrooms. Resource Salaries: Faculty | Administrative Presidential pay: Private | Public Financial resources: Salary and cost-of-living calculators Career resources: Academic | Nonacademic Library: Previous articles by topic | by date | by column Career Talk, Ms. Mentor, and more... Landing your first job On the tenure track Mid-career and on Administrative careers Nonacademic careers for Ph.D.'s Talk about your career Blogs

By HOWARD L. REITER

I recently completed a five-year term as chairman of the political science department at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. I won't say I was a great success — you'd have to ask my colleagues and dean about that — but I did learn a lot on the job and have some survival tips for other department chairs.

During my first year as chair, we conducted three searches, one of which caused much internal dissension. We granted tenure to three colleagues, and one of those decisions had to be defended to higher authorities. We adapted to a new general-education curriculum and revamped our graduate curriculum. I hired, and then fired, a new staff member. On top of all that, about a quarter of my colleagues seceded to form a new department.

So I take a back seat to no one in undergoing a baptism of fire. Here are some of the rules I learned.

Nobody held a gun to your head. No matter how reluctantly you took the job, you had the ultimate say as to whether to accept it. In that sense, you took the job willingly, knowing it would be difficult and sometimes stressful. Nobody forced you to seek it, or promised a bed of roses. The corollary to that rule is never to complain about the job to your colleagues. As far as they are concerned, you have tremendous power and lots of money to ease your way. They all feel overworked and underappreciated — as you did before you became chair — and you will get no sympathy from lamenting your latest woes.

It's a (literally) thankless job. Don't expect to be thanked for many of the things you will do for colleagues, staff members, and students. That is not to say you won't ever be thanked — note to my colleagues: I was usually thanked — only that you will be thanked fewer times than you deserve. When you are thanked, regard it as above and beyond what you expected. Don't forget that people may be projecting their Oedipal issues onto you, or remembering times when they thought you did them wrong. I comforted myself during those times by recalling that I probably didn't thank my predecessors enough.

To govern is to choose, said President Kennedy. And my corollary is, To choose is to offend. Expect criticism. It will not always result from the most-controversial or hard-to-defend decisions you will make, but sometimes from those that will seem like no-brainers to you. Your motives and sense of fairness will be suspected. See previous comments on Oedipal issues.

You'll get your paycheck. As crass as it sounds, your paycheck will arrive on schedule. No amount of difficulty will result in a pay cut or empty envelope. That can help soothe your raw emotions at difficult times.

Land the canoe. My wife and I enjoy canoeing, but neither of us is much good at it. Yet somehow we manage to get around, and we somehow get the canoe back to the starting point. The analogy here is that many of your big projects will involve numerous bumps in the road and a lack of elegance in execution. As long as the overall goal is reached, don't dwell on the fact that it didn't go as smoothly as it might have. And when you screw up, just bear in mind that the only leaders who never screw up are those who don't try to accomplish great things.

When in doubt, reveal. Most of the trouble you will get into with your colleagues will come from their lack of information. Try to be as open as possible about every decision you make. One of the worst problems for a department is communication by rumor, innuendo, and paranoia. And try not to communicate selectively; at all possible times, send around memos (via e-mail) so that everyone has access to the same information and nobody gets tagged as "chair's pet."

Frankly, some members of the department are wiser, more reliable, and harder-working than others. It will be tempting to make those people your confidants, and pretty soon the others will start accusing you of playing favorites. Some of that is unavoidable — both relying on certain people and having others resent their influence — but when possible, spread the responsibilities and the rewards.

When in doubt, be discreet. You may notice a certain "tension" — administrators don't like the word "contradiction" — between this rule and its predecessor. It only means that your judgment will be needed to determine when each rule should be engaged. Some areas will be pretty clear, such as personal information that colleagues share with you — an illness, a pregnancy, a divorce — that is really nobody else's business. Others will be harder to delineate.

Sometimes the answer is timing. Once I heard a student, whom I'll call Mike, complain about a new faculty member — "Chris" — in Chris's very first semester. After asking Mike a variety of questions, I concluded that Chris had not done anything wrong and explained my reasoning to Mike, who seemed satisfied. I decided not to tell Chris, not wanting to shake Chris's confidence.

A few months later, I learned that Mike had complained all the way to the president, to no avail. Now I had to decide whether to tell Chris, while protecting Mike. I decided that Chris had a right to know — but when? My solution was to wait until the final grades were in and then I told Chris, emphasizing that I did not think he had done anything wrong. So in this case, timing was the answer to the tension between transparency and discretion.

My door is always open. I adopted that policy as much as I could (see above, "when in doubt, reveal").

Say yes whenever possible. Most of what your colleagues will ask for will be perfectly reasonable. Due to fiscal constraints, staff constraints, or the need to be fair to everyone, you won't be able to grant every wish. But if you can at least express agreement in principle and grant reasonable wishes, you will build up capital for the times when you need to ask a favor from that colleague.

Practice nonrandom acts of kindness. Another way to build capital is to do small favors for your colleagues. In my case, I gave them cards on their birthdays. It sounds hokey — no, it is hokey — but who knows what small benefits it may have given me when I needed the benefit of the doubt.

The foregoing policies are mostly about dealing with your colleagues. I have a couple of other tips for dealing with your dean:

Be a public citizen. When I stepped down as chairman, one of the higher administrators told me that what she liked about me was that I wasn't parochial and focused entirely on my department, but thought about the greater good of the university. Of course, one's departmental interests and the greater good of the university are often compatible, or at least you need to persuade the dean of that. In particular, show how that new hire will contribute to one — preferably more than one — of the college's strategic goals.

Don't go empty-handed. If you need resources from the dean, show that you are willing to contribute some of your own. Even if you can only come up with 25 percent of the cost, that is enough to show that your request is so important to you that you are willing to sacrifice for it. And you will look far better than some of those other chairs, who always say "Gimme."

Many of my comments sound rather negative, but only because I am focusing on the tough times. The job will also bring great satisfactions, especially the ability to build institutions, shape the future of the department, and reward deserving people.

Finally, develop and project a positive attitude. Believe that the department is fortunate to have you in the chair's role for the next few years. Your colleagues and staff members will want to know that a steady and confident hand is on the helm. And most of all, good luck.