Note: In the “Ask the Chair” series, the author of How to Chair a Department answers your questions about departmental leadership. Send your queries via Facebook or email. Read previous columns here.
Question: I’m a pretty new tenure-track professor in a small department, but I’m already imagining future roles as department chair and — why not? — perhaps even as dean. A senior dean advised me to keep pace with my tenure and promotion, and I think I’m well on track for that. But I’m curious about how, on the side, I can best prepare for administrative roles while I still have the luxury of time.
You’ve offered advice for soon-to-be chairs before, but what about someone in my position who won’t be moving into the administrative ranks for a few years yet? How can I enhance my CV and experience now to ensure I’m well-prepared when the time comes to step into a leadership role?
Signed,
Waiting in the Wings
Dear Waiting,
You’re not the only one who is curious about your situation. I have so many questions, beginning with: Why do you want to chair? What in your early experience of academe has put this idea in your head, given that most new and experienced professors usually run in the other direction? In other words, what kind of a weirdo are you? (My kind, sounds like.)
Good faculty leaders come in many different shapes and sizes, and my answer to your question, to some extent, depends on the style of leader you hope to be. Some chairs are effective because they’re process-oriented and analytical, some because they lead with their heart first, not their head. Some chairs leave their legacy in updating and strengthening the curriculum and student experience in their department; some instead make their primary investment in their faculty colleagues. There are a number of axes like these along which leaders might place themselves, and the picture that emerges would tell you a lot about where you’d most fruitfully invest your leadership energies. (Perhaps higher ed needs a “Discover Your Chair Style” quiz to help guide would-be leaders, but that’s a project for another column.)
For now, it’s something to keep in mind. Set about discovering which elements of faculty leadership are most rewarding for you, and lean into those. (You can’t entirely ignore the others: Chairs and deans wear lots of hats.) Management can feel mundane while leadership is exciting, but a department chair must provide both.
You mention, and move quickly past, your dean’s advice about hitting the marks for tenure and promotion. If your progress in teaching, research, and service to this point suggests that you’ll easily clear those hurdles and earn tenure, consider yourself lucky. I mean, how many assistant professors describe those first six years as affording them “the luxury of time”?
I realize, of course, that you mean that you have plenty of time yet before you will take on a leadership role and put your workdays at the mercy of others, rather than suggesting that you’re twiddling your thumbs and playing Candy Crush on your phone. But it’s important, too, to realize that the portfolio you’re building to win tenure and promotion isn’t different in kind from the CV that will get you that chair’s job.
Nothing is more important to position you for a chair’s job than success as a teacher and scholar/creator. I wrote about this recently. To some degree, the achievements that win you the offer of a chair’s position, and the skills that make you successful in that role, are out of alignment. Most faculty members in a department want a chair who can successfully lead us, but we don’t necessarily know what that means in practice. We do know what it means to be a good teacher and scholar, or at least we think we do. So we often end up picking that successful academic to be chair and hoping they will actually have leadership skills, too.
Here’s another variable: Do you hope to chair at your current institution or elsewhere? You mention that yours is a small department. Your path to leadership might be foreclosed if your department has a senior professor in the chair’s job who isn’t interested in relinquishing it, or in the event that there are other colleagues, senior to you, who are also eying the role. In that case, you might have to change campuses to become chair. Alternately, in some small departments, the chair’s job rotates and everyone is expected to take a turn.
It makes a difference only because if you hope to chair where you currently work, you will have to lay the groundwork and “be of service” in routine, low-level ways that your colleagues will notice and appreciate. Along with strong teaching and scholarly/creative work, building generous collegial relationships in your department might be enough to win you the internal appointment.
But neither your helpfulness nor your collegiality will be a factor when you apply for a chair’s position at other institutions. To be competitive for an “outside” chair, you’ll have to put together a few quantifiable achievements that demonstrate your ability to create consensus and build a vision — ideally while managing a budget. (That sort of leadership work will help you win an internal appointment, too.)
Since yours is a small department, it’s unlikely to have formal leadership positions other than the chair. Look for occasional opportunities to step up, such as serving on a search committee or preparing the self-study report for a program review. Depending on your relationship with your current department head, you may also be able to mention your curiosity about the chair’s role, and signal your willingness to get a taste of faculty leadership when the chance arises (filling in during a leave or sabbatical, for instance).
If you imagine chairing at another institution, you’ll also need to think at some point about who in your department could write a recommendation on your behalf, attesting to those hard-to-quantify gifts — what a colleague of mine describes as “that mysterious thing called leadership.” This can be pretty tricky, especially in a small department. Some colleagues are wont to interpret your desire to move as an indicator that you think you’re too good for the place, and take real offense. And while it’s not a formal requirement for tenure anywhere that I know of, folks often expect some manner of loyalty to the institution — or at least, expect no flagrant displays of disloyalty. Typically in a search for an outside chair, letters of recommendation would not be required until you have reached the late stages of the process; it’s probably wise to play things close to the vest until that point, and to ask for discretion from those whom you do approach.
In the meantime, where else on your campus might you get some experience, and some visibility, in faculty governance? Depending on your institution such roles might include serving on the faculty senate, membership on various standing committees, or assisting with an accreditation review.
That’s all in the way of learning by doing, but there are of course systematic approaches to the work of faculty leadership, too. You’ll find plenty of books on leadership, including my own (shameless promotion), How to Chair a Department. About the work of the dean, I know far less: With the exception of a six-month stint as associate dean, I’ve been shut out of the campus C suite myself. But I heartily recommend my colleague and friend George Justice’s book How to Be a Dean.
You could also go the workshop route, although most of them are aimed at people who are already chairs. In my own discipline, the Association of Departments of English runs valuable peer seminars over the summer for departmental leaders, including a daylong workshop for new chairs. If you’re in English or foreign languages, it might be worth finding out whether they’d welcome someone who’s merely “chair curious.” (In the workshops I do on various campuses, we often create a session on chairing called “soup to nuts,” to which both new and aspiring chairs are invited.)
I don’t know your field, Waiting. In the very likely scenario that you’re not a literature and language professor — we can’t all be that lucky — does your disciplinary organization provide any similar kinds of professional-development opportunities?
Finally, your institution may have some training for department chairs that would welcome you in to test the leadership waters.
I’ll be honest with you, Waiting: I can’t recall ever hearing a new tenure-track faculty member say they aspire to be chair. As anyone who has read this column before will know, I find chairing to be the most rewarding work I’ve done in academe, and I wish more folks were drawn to it rather than simply having it thrust upon them. I hope that as you work your way toward tenure and promotion, your experiences continue to confirm your sense that it’s work that you’d like to take on.
But don’t put the cart before the horse: Any time and energy that you put into burnishing your leadership credentials would be worse than useless if the institution doesn’t grant you tenure. First things first.
