Chairing Academic Departments : Traditional and Emerging Expectations

What role does the position of department chair occupy in higher education today? Once characterized as largely a management function, the 21st-century department chair is now facing a host of emerging challenges that require additional skills and fresh approaches to fulfilling the role.In Chairing Academic Departments, the author offers experience-based suggestions for new, existing, and potential chairs as they face a higher education enterprise that is undergoing significant change. While acknowledging that many traditional responsibilities and expectations will remain unaltered, the author also identifies several dynamic functions-from entrepreneurial work and fundraising, faculty evaluation and motivation, student recruitment and retention, problem solving, and interpersonal interactions such as advising, meditating, and mentoring.The author navigates the changes arising in the role of department chair by offering valuable insight in the following areas: Characteristics of effective department chairs How to work with, and advocate for, internal constituents Managing and disseminating information Recruiting, retaining, and evaluating faculty Fiscal responsibility and strategic planning Benefits of serving as department chair Planning to exit the chair positionWhile the position of department chair will continue to evolve, Chairing Academic Departments equips readers with the situational understanding and practical advice they need to meet the demands of tomorrow.

N. Douglas Lees is professor and chair of biology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). He received his undergraduate degree in biology from Providence College and his Ph.D. in biological sciences from Northwestern University. Upon arriving at IUPUI in the early 1970s, he began a journey of simultaneous career and institution building. He began a journey of simultaneous carrier and institution building. He has witnessed and participated in the conversion of a pair of two-year feeder campuses into an urban research university that will serve as a model for the future.
His personal research has focused on sterol biosynthesis in fungi with an interest in identifying new targets for the development of antifungal drugs. Since being named chair in 1992, he has developed interests in chair leadership and several other difficult issues facing higher education in this current era of change. Away from the office, Doug and his wife Stephanie are occupied with raising and educating their four children, who range in age from 13 to 24.