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 Twitter, Facebook, or email. Read last month’s column here.
Question: I’m a pre-tenure faculty member serving as head of a small department where everyone is likely to be chair at one point or another. Given the challenging budget situation on our campus and the tensions over the direction of the university, there’s a lot of concern/fear (rightly or wrongly, I can’t say) about the solvency of some of our small humanities and social-sciences departments. There is a sense in some of our departments that the chairship is functionally a game of hot potato, in which everyone hopes not to be the chair when the ship goes down (to mix metaphors).
Do you have any thoughts about this — on how the role of the chair changes in this kind of unsettling environment, and how one might lead given these fears? I feel strongly that it doesn’t serve anyone to be paranoid or strictly reactionary. But I wonder: How does one approach the emotional management of a faculty gripped by a constant sense of impending doom?
Signed,
Hot Potatoes & Sinking Ships
Dear Hot & Sinking,
I’m concerned for you — and concerned that my advice will seem like weak sauce, given the serious challenges you describe. You’re confronting a number of issues over which you have little control but they all converge on you, the chair. Your delightfully muddled metaphor involving chairs, potatoes, and ships suggests another: a game of musical chairs in which “the winner” is the one left without a place to sit.
Demographics and institutional policies, it seems, have conspired to put you in an impossible situation. It’s noble to take on the work of chair when called, but no institution with tenured professors should ever ask an untenured faculty member to lead a department. (To be frank, your tenured colleagues should not have allowed this to happen to you.)
Among the reasons why this is such a bad idea: Heavy administrative obligations can hamper your progress on your scholarship and teaching. And the interpersonal (or affective) work of chair can create tension with the colleagues who will, in the near future, be deciding your future.
I’m almost certain the answer is No, but the question needs to be asked before we go any further: Is there any way, at this point, to bow out gracefully from the chair’s job without injuring your reputation? Is there a senior colleague in your department (one of those who should have “taken one for the team” rather than making you do it) who might now step in for you? Because my first piece of advice for you — and for any other pre-tenure faculty member who is being pressed to serve as chair prematurely — is that you dodge this commitment, even if it costs you a bit.
No? Let’s try to think this through, then. In doing so, I’m making at least three assumptions. My blueprint for a fulfilling career might not look like yours. But were I in your shoes (or chair), I would have three goals:
- To earn tenure.
- To support my departmental colleagues, students, and staff members.
- To make sure that my discipline continues to be represented at the institution.
There’s a flow chart in all of this that I’m not creative enough to draw. But my concern is that there’s no way to advance any one of those three goals without jeopardizing at least one of the other two.
Let’s focus just on the goal of tenure. Tenure, in the familiar analogy, is a three-legged stool supported by teaching, research/scholarship/creative work, and service. Evidence of all three goes into the dossier, which is then assessed by your colleagues — beginning with senior professors in your department.
By making you the untenured chair of your department, your dean has strongly disincentivized any tough decision-making on your part. Why antagonize those who hold your future in their hands?
But if the fears circulating on the campus are warranted, you may be called upon to bring unwelcome news — or, worse, to make unwelcome changes — in your department. Talk about a Hobson’s choice. If, for instance, the dean asks you to increase teaching loads and/or raise enrollment caps in your department’s courses, do you make those changes, satisfying the dean and angering your colleagues? Or do you dare to refuse the orders from on high, becoming something of a hero to your faculty but putting a target on your back with the dean?
Too often we as faculty members forget that we do, in fact, have bosses. As chair, you may have no choice but to implement unpopular mandates (including, in some scenarios, budget cuts and staff reductions). You can “go limp” — go all Bartleby, as we say in literary studies, responding to mandates from the college with a quiet “I would prefer not to.” But to do so risks relinquishing agency over how the changes (which your internal protest will surely not stop) will be made in your department. Worse, the dean might remove you from the chair’s position (which would certainly jeopardize your tenure decision).
Perhaps the only way to thread this ridiculous needle is to do the chair’s job with integrity, in a way that you can feel good about, while at the same time making your teaching and research absolutely bulletproof. Which, I realize, is akin to telling you to take on a second, full-time job, and I apologize.
Any tough, unpopular decisions you make will leave you vulnerable to your department colleagues. But demonstrated leadership might make you admired by people outside your unit (who will populate the higher-level tenure-and-promotion committees) as well as by your dean and provost. And if your teaching and research — not to mention your service, as chair — are truly exemplary, even if certain departmental colleagues are inclined to be vindictive or petty and your tenure bid is turned down at that level, the merits of your case will be obvious to those outside the department.
None of this, unfortunately, gets at the existential threat that seems implicit in your question: What if I’m trying to stay viable for tenure in a department that might not exist to grant it by the time my review comes around?
For that reason — and this is not a suggestion that I make lightly: It’s not too soon to start updating your CV. Of course this isn’t a great job market in which to move as a faculty member, though you beat the odds in getting your current tenure-track position, and your credentials have, ideally, improved since then.
But recognize, too, that the skills and experience you’re building as chair might help you launch yourself to a more stable perch — not just as a scholar in your field, but into a chair’s or dean’s job. However bad the tenure-track market gets for faculty positions, institutions continue to hire experienced chairs who can come on board and provide stability during periods of transition. I landed my first chair’s job in a national search; I had applied because I didn’t see how my professional aspirations could come to fruition in my department. Building on that first experience, I was able to move, again as an “outside” chair, to my dream job, where I’m celebrating 15 years.
Given all the challenges you’re facing on a personal and professional level, it’s remarkable that you’re still asking about how you can support and lead your faculty. They don’t deserve you! I’m tempted to say they can fend for themselves, just as they’ve left you alone in a precarious position. But no doubt such anger is misdirected. In closing, then, here are a few ideas about leading during what may be an existential crisis in the life of your department:
- Focus on your students. It’s corny, but no less true: In tense times in higher education, let their learning and well-being be your priority. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic is the very picture of futility — but we can still try to care for our passengers.
- Make the case for your program’s value. Your department has doubtless started some of this work already, but you’ll want to get even more active and creative in telling the story of your unit and its strengths. Show how your department’s work furthers the strategic goals of the institution. Involve your faculty members (and students, without provoking their anxiety) in creating that narrative.
- Put ego on the backburner. Easier said than done, but do your best to lead in a spirit of caritas — charity, love, generosity of spirit. Try not to let the external pressures turn faculty members against one another. In other words, live by Bill’s credo (in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure): “Be excellent to each other.”
