A suggestion for the heads of academic departments at colleges: If you want to get good grades for your job performance, you might be wise not to have the faculty members you oversee do the grading. Instead, grade yourself.
A recent online poll conducted by Academic Impressions, a company in Denver that provides professional-development training to colleges, found that 85 percent of the academic department chairs questioned gave themselves grades of B or higher for their overall performance. Just 42 percent of the faculty members who responded gave the head of their academic department an overall grade higher than a C.
Because the 104 department heads who responded to the survey did not necessarily come from the same colleges as the 191 faculty members who were polled, the survey's results might have been skewed somewhat by differences in the work environments of the two populations sampled, and should not be interpreted as an exact, scientific measurement of how far apart people within the same institutions stand on the performance issue.
Nevertheless, the gaps between the two populations' assessments were stark enough to suggest that many department heads have higher opinions of their own job performance than the people below them hold.
The two populations also differed somewhat in their view of the department chair's job, with chairs being most likely to regard faculty development as their most important responsibility, and faculty members being most likely to regard planning and budgeting as the most important responsibility of their immediate boss.
When department chairs were asked to discuss specific aspects of their job, they described advancement and fund raising as the task they were least prepared for and for which they deserved the lowest grades. More than a third gave themselves a grade of D or F in that area.
Asked to describe the most salient challenges to their effectiveness, the largest share of department chairs pointed to difficulties in managing their time. Budget concerns ranked second among the challenges they were most likely to cite.
Amit Mrig, chief executive of Academic Impressions, said in a news release that the survey's results indicate that changes in academe are causing department chairs to take on more responsibilities "outside of their core competencies as educators."
The poll was conducted in January using Google surveys.
Comments
1. 11242283 - March 16, 2010 at 06:30 am
Note to Peter Schimdt: when I was a dept chair I was nobody's "boss" --- now that I am not dept chair, the current chair is not my "boss". My job was to manage the dept, not to be anyone's boss. Sheesh, even the president of the university is not my boss.
My own experience is that dept chairs are vastly underappreciated by the institutions they serve and inadequately supported. What passes for "training and development" is pathetic and mostly revolves around legal issues (not unimportant but nowhere near the whole of the job). In my own opinion, a lot of administrative bloat -- at my institution at least -- could be avoided if departments (not just chairs) were given meaningful responsibility and authority over their own operations. At my place, the work of chairs is replicated over and over again through various Assoc. Deans and Assoc VPs and usually doesn't wind up much different than when it left the dept.
2. qianqian5522 - March 16, 2010 at 07:32 am
The poll was conducted in January using Google surveys.
3. ksledge - March 16, 2010 at 08:09 am
There would be an obvious participation bias for these data. Chairs who don't care probably would not fill out a survey (and might be bad at their job). Chairs who care would be more likely to fill one out. Faculty who have great chairs don't notice problems and won't fill out the survey. Faculty with complains will fill it out.
4. mercy_otis_warren - March 16, 2010 at 09:43 am
@usc158: No, that doesn't follow, and the two parts of 11242283's argument aren't contradictory. Having immediate, direct authority over people, as well as over governance and procedure, makes one a "boss." My chair has no authority to fire me, capriciously change my work schedule, force me to attend a meeting or to serve on a committee, and on. But there are numerous ways in which a chair can be given greater responsibility over his/her own operations -- free from the burden and layers of lower administration -- that would not extend his/her authority over faculty in the way described above--for example, being able to appeal more directly to potential donors, not having to receive admin approval for visits by chosen finalists for an approved job, etc.
5. infogoon - March 16, 2010 at 11:08 am
Are there any institutions out there that practice so-called "360 degree evaluations" in the academic departments? I think it might be helpful for chairs to know what the faculty think of them, perhaps even more useful than the traditional chair evaluation of the faculty.
For places that pride themselves on openness and egalitarianism, colleges sure are hierarchical when it comes to giving feedback.
6. profmomof1 - March 16, 2010 at 11:10 am
I've worked with many different chairs, only a few of whom were actually good at their job. Many were semi-incompetent but benign, a few actively harmed their departments. Biggest problem? Essentially no training by the university for anything other than procedural matters. Nothing about what makes for good leadership. Just because someone is a good scholar doesn't mean they are innately a good leader, and the job description of a Chair is vastly different than that of a professor. I think the incompetent ones I worked with could have been good with (1) leadership workshops for chairs and (2) more release time to devote to the job of Chair (most here have to teach a lot also).
7. cwinton - March 16, 2010 at 11:23 am
11242283 is pretty close to hitting the nail on the head. Department chairs get all kinds of stuff dumped on them from up the administrative chain since they are the bottom rung of the administrative ladder. In many ways they are the real academic administrators of the university. Deans are middle managers who are expected to jump through fund raising hoops first and foremost. Having served many years in dean and chair positions as well as many years as a regular faculty member, the amount of useless reporting demanded from on high never ceased to amaze me. I am convinced it is all part of survival instinct (cover your butt), concomitantly helping to justify one's existence. Administration instinctively seeks to expand administrative staffing because a measure of administrative worth is the number of people reporting to one. I'm quite certain this is the source of much of the administrative "bloat" characterizing so many academic institutions these days. I spent my last 10 years in academia (gratefully) back in my regular academic position, and was amazed yet again at how much the administrative folderol being pushed down to the faculty had increased, taking time away from their teaching and research. All those so eager to increase accountability and performance measures never seem to consider the huge costs (much duplicative) associated with this kind of activity. I remember being saddled with an internal program review, a state program review, and a disciplinary accreditation visit all in one year. All addressed the same things but each had its own pet nomenclature and syntax, and none allowed any consideration of the utility of the others. That was 20 years ago! I remember being told, after a number of consecutive years of having a new budget process each year we finally had it right ... next year, new budget process yet again, along with additional staffing to implement it. As for all of those useless reports - each tended to have a champion, with a staff, and whose existence depended on others down the administrative line willingly doing the heavy lifting required to make it happen. I don't know if it's possible to put the genie back in the bottle, but with all the budget cutting, surely elimination of a great deal of this kind of administration is in order. Perhaps the mandate should be that the number of titled administrative positions could not exceed 10% of the FTE regular faculty (or you pick the number). Administrative bloat is a fact, but even with that, no one ever adds in the amount of what should be considered administrative activity is handled by regular faculty. One things for sure, faculty need chairs who understand that faculty time is precious and should not be wasted to support the latest and greatest reporting demand coming from on high.
8. fergbutt - March 16, 2010 at 01:10 pm
If Obama can give himself a B+ (as he did in an interview with Steve Croft on 60 Minutes late last year), then I guess any chair can claim an A+
9. blesstayo - March 16, 2010 at 01:28 pm
There are two kinds of chairs --(1)the managerial chair who supervises and evaluates faculty members, recommends hiring, firing, promotion and tenure. S/he gets all the blames from students, faculty members, dean and even parents. You don't have to be crazy to be a managerial chair but it helps sometime. (2)the non-managerial chair in a hostile unionized environment can be a lame duck! This chair has less experience with short and long range planning. Producing annual departmental report beyond PDPs/PDRs is foreign to this chair.
Now you know why we have decisive and indecisive deans originating from different kinds of chairs. Similarly, we have decisive and indecisive Provosts/VPs originating from all kinds of deans.
10. engedprof - March 16, 2010 at 04:54 pm
Chairs should get ongoing feedback. Those scan-tron sheets and open-ended questions are great when they are used more often. Chairs end up as targets for the stored-up resentments and slights that they commit over a long period of time. Nothing changes for the better this way because the arsenal of insults and the descriptions of horrible incidents are too overwhelming for any one person to take seriously at one time and so the tendency for chairs to dismiss their culpibility in matters of departmental disharmony.
11. sdryer - March 16, 2010 at 05:22 pm
I agree with most of the previous comments. I would actually appreciate input from my faculty, there are certainly ways it could improve my performance. I would balance that input with the observation that if you have never actually done the job, it is hard to evaluate it or say what it "should" be since you have not experienced all of the demands made from all sides. Faculty often have no idea at all how universities actually make important decisions and tend to blame the messenger. Most of the chairs I had coming up through the ranks were excellent.
12. upallnight - March 16, 2010 at 09:21 pm
I only recently realized that many departments have a "head" rather than a "chair." Department heads are far more powerful than chairs, administratively speaking. So my department head is a boss. He/she assigns teaching and teaching times and locations. If He/she does not like you, your life can be made to be pretty miserable. I am tenured, but feel that I have no say in what happens in the department. It's all relative. No other tenured faculty have a say either. The only people who have a say are those who are friends with the head. There is absolutely faculty governance. As my institution goes, the heads work for the deans and the deans do not care if faculty are happy. It seems like deans see faculty as "a dime a dozen." If faculty leave, there is always more where they came from.
13. honore - March 17, 2010 at 09:51 am
at my campus, the "successful" department heads are those who were put into their posts because they:
1. had the fewest allegations leveled against them previouysly from women, gays, the handi-capped, minorities...
2. satisfied the typically misguided and insincere "social justice" machinations of the current President/Chancellor
3. showed promise of bringing with them or attracting corporate money to fund more teaching/research in the department, regardless of how compromised this money would make the department's work
4. were the best connected within the ol' boys/gals network of nepotism and insiderism
5. were owed favors for secrets well-kept on the previous chair's (or college dean's) sordid sexual affairs with support staff
6. had the cleanest police record, free of internet porn charges, wife abuse, embezzlement of funds...
sign me shifting and shafting in Madison, WI