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[sci_case]

Part of the job description for dept. chairs at my institution includes "curriculum leadership."

What, on your view, does this entail? 

In particular, I'm wondering the extent to which chairs should try to "shape" the curriculum, rather than have that process be strictly grass roots, with any changes in courses and/or programs being determined by dept. faculty, with chair facilitating that process.

I know chairs who are on the latter side (in the extreme), in part (I believe) to avoid any extra work/blame on their part.  Others are more assertive, working WITH faculty to shape their programs.

Norms elsewhere?

[glowdart]

In my ideal world, a chair would ask us "what needs to be reformed?"  
or would say, "The Dean/ Accreditation Agency/ whatever" is urging us to reform XYZ
or would say, "I've been looking at enrollment trends and we need to consider why X is happening or how to treat Y new development."

Then, after we discussed some ideas, the chair would assign people to do the revisions or develop new classes or whatever needs to be done.

Then we'd discuss those revisions.

Then the chair would see that changes that were approved by the department were implemented.

So, a shepherd with a sense of direction?  

I also expect the chair to have access to more big picture information than any individual faculty member -- information on enrollment trends, course offering trends, etc.  So, I expect the chair to lead by telling us, "No, sorry, we can't run 9 sections of that course because we're only filling 3 historically.  We could use extra sections of This Course or This Other Course, though."  And I also want the chair to be able to say, "The Sciences are changing a requirement and I think if we offered Our Discipline & Science, then we might be able to fill a need for them while increasing our enrollment hours."

[sci_case]

Sounds ideal indeed...

So what about programs that have persisted unchanged, despite a great deal of faculty turnover and shifts in specialties and student interest?  So for example, you may have a very strong assumption that ecology is the flagship area, but the faculty are now stronger in bioinfomatics, but few (esp. jr. faculty) are willing to actually face the couple senior faculty in ecology who now have senior admin. positions in suggested we retool.

I like the ideal, but am struggling with how progress is possible without a strong chair, in some cases.

[oatmeal]

OP--This depends on how "shared governance" (if you have it) actually works. Tinkering with the curriculum is not that useful, and can cause tension, but there should be a curriculum committee (or some such committee) in the department, which reviews and suggests changes. There is probably a whole set of faculty governance involved, which means a chair should work closely with the dean and the faculty senate. Curriculum leadership can also come from assessment (not always pleasant...). For example, if assessment shows that a new methodology class is needed, a leader will advocate that change but will do it through shared governance. As a chair, that is how I proceed. But you also need a department that is relatively open to change.