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: By the time winter break finally arrived in December, at the end of my first semester chairing my department, I was exhausted. I’m not discouraged (yet) about the chair’s job. However, I am beginning to wonder whether the hours I’m putting into the job will pay any real dividends — for my faculty colleagues, for our department staff members, for our students. And yes, for me. I know that real change takes time, and that I need to be patient. But I’m really feeling like I could use a win — some tangible sign that we’re at least moving in the right direction.
Do you have any advice for a chair who, while willing to play the long game, would also be grateful for some immediate gratification?
Signed,
Already Running on Empty
Dear Running:
Thanks for the Jackson Browne earworm. I’ve often said that I find chairing to be rewarding work. But as many longtime chairs can tell you: It often is a thankless job. In my years of chairing, I’ve definitely heard some “attaboys,” small and large, from appreciative colleagues. And I hope that you, too, are (at the very least) getting some occasional, informal encouragement from your department members. But those kudos certainly don’t arrive as frequently as they’re needed, given the stresses and obligations of the role.
The advanced-degree programs that launch us into the academic profession train us to be laser-focused on our own work. They don’t equip us with skills that would enable us to manage and lead our departments. In fact, they train us to be parasites: to overlook completely the human infrastructure that creates the conditions necessary for faculty work. That’s most painfully obvious in the impatient, cavalier way that all too many professors deal with staff members.
But it manifests, too, in the faculty tendency to take the chair’s work for granted. Perhaps that’s not surprising, given that, if you’re doing a good job in this role, your work is mostly invisible. Your faculty members won’t see everything you are doing to make the place run smoothly (though you may quickly get the blame when it doesn’t). Likewise, the deans only see the grievances that show up in their office, not all of the ones that department chairs resolve well before that point.
There’s no point in being coy: You may need to fish for the compliments you need to sustain you on the job. Where are they to be found?
Some of the affirmation you seek may have to come from folks outside of your department. I’m fortunate to find support close to home: Both my wife and my daughter chair departments at their respective institutions and are well acquainted with the gentle art of chairing. Odds are, you don’t have chairs in the family. But your spouse or partner — even if they’re in a very different line of work from higher ed — will be able to recognize the blood, toil, sweat, and tears you’re putting in, and at least affirm your commitment, if not necessarily the results.
Beyond your family, you need to go looking for people you can talk with about chairing — people you trust who can help you see where you’re making progress and where you need to focus your energies.
At the top of the list would be your dean; I dealt with this at some length in my July 2024 column. It doesn’t hurt to ask the dean for some supportive feedback. Good chairs are hard to find, and your dean wants you to be successful: Because if you’re not, they’re just going to have to find your replacement. A request for advice may well remind your dean of what a good job you’re doing. Just temper your expectations: Most deans have enough else going on that it’s simply unrealistic to expect them to have a lot of time to recognize and acknowledge that you’re moving your department in the right direction.
A better source of support is your fellow chairs. I’ve regularly advocated for chairs to self-organize and meet for mutual support. If you don’t have such a network on your campus, think about creating it. If not that, set up periodic meetings with a faculty friend who is either now serving as a department chair, or has done so in the past. That person can be the mirror you need as well as a sounding board.
Ask your department directly. No one is in a better position to appreciate the work you’ve been putting in than your department’s professors. Have you considered informally surveying them? Why not create an anonymous online form to get some real-time feedback — in the same way that we ask our students to complete midterm evaluations to allow us to course-correct if necessary.
Try to frame the survey in terms of how things are going in the department, rather than asking specifically for feedback on your performance. To whatever degree possible, make it less about you as a personality and more about the job you’re doing (or trying to do) and the state of the department.
If you’re concerned about what you might hear, remember that the feedback will be coming directly to you alone: You may come in for some criticism, but at least it won’t be aired publicly. Keep in mind — as, ideally, your colleagues will in providing their feedback — that the chair’s job is voluntary service. If no one can come up with anything kind to say, perhaps they can instead come up with someone else to chair the department as you step away.
Take your own advice: Be patient. It’s usually way too soon to expect “a win” in the first year of your work as a department chair (although if folks are clamoring for a new coffee maker and you can afford it, buy it. Take the win!).
Real change — big and substantive — takes time. But there are also small victories to savor. In the weeks and months to come, start looking for tangible evidence that you’re on the right track. Depending on the size, history, and culture of your department, you might look for encouraging signs in a few different places: better attendance at department meetings and events; more folks volunteering for various tasks and assignments; fewer faculty and staff members dropping by your office to air grievances. In the first year of one of my chair jobs, I had a faculty member tell me that she had been looking for other positions for years but had stopped: That seemed like a significant endorsement of department life.
If you’re genuinely working hard to support your department, I believe you will hear about it — perhaps not now, not when you think you most need it — but eventually. Think, by way of analogy, of that unexpected shout-out from a former student that arrives unbidden just when you need it.
The gestation period is unpredictable but, if you’re making a difference, people are registering the fact, on some level. Something will happen to cause it to rise to the surface, even among those most apt to take your work for granted. The trigger might be a bad chair following in your wake, causing your colleagues to long for the good old days (i.e., your “reign”). It might be an external review of your department calling attention to the good work you’ve done. It might even come in the form of recruiters reaching out to you with an administrative opportunity at a different institution because work you’ve done has been more visible than you’d thought.
Winter break provides all of us with an opportunity to recharge. But when the new semester gets underway, don’t forget to protect some time — as I recommended in a recent column — to do the work that brought you into higher ed in the first place, whatever your field. Chairs who are cut off completely from their scholarly or artistic expertise will eventually become a mere middle-manager whom department colleagues don’t respect.
And faculty members — those of you who aren’t currently chairing and have read this far — give the gift of recognition in 2025. When your chair helps you out or acknowledges some achievement you’ve made, let them know that you’re grateful for the work they’re doing in the job to support you in yours.
