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 previous columns here.
Question: Have you ever considered stepping down from a particular administrative role? If so, why? Under what circumstances would you advise an administrator to seriously consider resigning from the chair’s position? In what types of situations would you advise a department to remain in the job?
Signed,
Dr. Depleted and Drained
Dear DDD,
Perhaps I’m atypical on this count — after all, I’m a bit thin-skinned in a world where resilience is prized. But I’m tempted to say that, as a chair, if you don’t think about resigning at least once a week, you’re not paying attention.
It’s the very nature of your job to be the regular recipient of frustrated outbursts, unreasonable requests, and unfair criticism. To routinely react by thinking, “I don’t need this &*^%#!,” surely is both healthy and human. But 95 percent of the time, that is a response you should keep to yourself, or at most share with a trusted confidant. You can probably only cry “wolf” once.
You asked about my own experience of this. For my first chair’s job years back, I came to the institution as an “outside” chair hired in a national search. That strange status has joys and perils of its own (and I should probably devote a future column to them). One of the challenges of an external appointment is that very often — usually? — an institution undertakes the considerable work and expense of a national search for a chair only because the department in question is, shall we say, troubled.
On that campus, I bumped up against large structural and institutional forces with a long history, as well as some very pointed local interpersonal tensions (some of them, too, with a very long history). I found it nearly impossible to do the work that I wanted to do and that my dean wanted me to do. Things got so tense that, midway through my second year, I came close to resigning, and talked to both my spouse and my most trusted mentor about it.
Now for most chairs, stepping down isn’t exactly a trust fall. Going from “chair” to “professor” is not a terrible demotion — indeed, many faculty members would see it as a smart move. You’re no longer walking the tightrope, and there’s a pretty good, pretty comfortable safety net. In my case, the contract under which I was hired required me to chair my department for three years: I really don’t know what would have happened had I tried to walk away. But both my wife and my wise colleague, while sympathizing with the very real strain I was experiencing, helped me to see that burning that bridge relatively early in my career (I was just 40) would most likely have long-lasting effects.
What effects, exactly?
Well it’s all speculation. But certainly, resigning would have made it next to impossible for me to secure another leadership position down the road, should I desire one. (At the time, I thought I might.) Even more broadly, my mentor suggested, it might have unpredictable ripple effects. After just a year in the saddle, for the reasons hinted at above, I already hoped I would not spend the rest of my career at that institution. But turning my back on my commitments and my colleagues might become known through the informal networks with which all academics are quite familiar.
In one of my favorite episodes of The Simpsons, Homer’s white work shirt comes out of the laundry pink, and he moans to Marge: “I’m not popular enough to be different!” In my case, I’m not brilliant enough to be difficult. I didn’t think I could afford to have that black mark on my record and remain viable on the job market.
So I took the advice I was given, and strapped in for the remainder of my three-year term. It was hard: They were some of the most difficult years of my life. But I did survive — and lived to chair again, moving to a much healthier institution and department, and in the process discovering something like a calling in this work.
And so, Depleted and Drained: I’m certainly not without both sympathy and empathy. I don’t know the details of your situation, but I do know what it’s like to feel stuck in the chair’s position. Yes, there are circumstances under which you should consider stepping down — administrative fiats that you believe would gut faculty work, personal or political conflicts with higher-ups that interfere with your ability to advocate for your department, internal turmoil in your program that you are too close to and unable to resolve.
On a few occasions in my various stints as chair, I have been prepared to quit over matters of principle — for example, lack of support from a dean for difficult personnel decisions. In a tense situation at a different institution, a hiring freeze was announced by the provost between the time I’d phoned to offer a candidate our position and the sending of the formal contract. My dean told me to call again and rescind the offer, which, technically, was not binding. I typed up a resignation letter and made an appointment with the dean, prepared to quit if he wouldn’t stand behind the job offer. Thankfully, the dean blinked.
Department heads are appointed for a set term for a reason: It’s difficult and demanding work, and no one should be “chair for life.” It’s always best, if you’re able, to finish out your term. You’ll step down without a blot on your reputation and keep other options open for yourself, at your current and future institutions.
If your appointment as chair is open-ended, try to schedule a meeting with your dean to establish an end date. Frame that conversation in terms of the good of the department rather than your own frustration and/or exhaustion with the role. And assuming that your pen name wasn’t chosen just for the alliteration, think about what your dean might provide you, too, in terms of emotional and practical support to deal with your fatigue. Release time from teaching? Sabbatical? More administrative or faculty support in your role? But you won’t get any of that unless you are brave enough to ask.
Academic department chairs can exercise an option almost unparalleled in the American labor force: Those of us who hold tenure or a continuing appointment in the department we serve can quit without losing our faculty position. Given the enticements of teaching and research, and the pressures of the chair’s role, quitting is a real temptation — and sometimes, for matters of principle, it’s the right thing to do. But tread carefully: If you do quit, you’d better be sure that it’s the role itself you hate, and not merely your institution’s version of it. Because abruptly stepping down from a leadership role could very well mean you never get another such opportunity.
An addendum to last month’s column. To judge from the volume of mail I received, my column on email etiquette touched a nerve. Managing email isn’t the most onerous part of a department chair’s job, but it is symbolically and emotionally charged. And based on what I’m hearing, it’s clear that a lot of departments don’t have well-thought-out and articulated guidelines for internal email communication — and they should. In a future column I’ll provide a template for drawing up departmental bylaws, since many of you told me your department doesn’t have any. That template will include a section on email etiquette, something that wouldn’t have crossed my mind to include a few months ago.
Many correspondents were especially irritated by a version of the reply-all email that is the equivalent of a group hug — for example, the note of congratulations that prompts a long chain of replies echoing the initial kudos. To paraphrase one reader, if you don’t have anything substantive to add to the discussion, express your congratulations off list.
Another reader wrote about his standing rule to wait 24 hours before hitting “send” on his replies to delicate or controversial emails. This allows him to cool down and take a second look at his response in the cold light of day — with the added bonus that the delay deprives a provocateur of the satisfaction of thinking that they’d derailed his agenda, or gotten inside his head.
One reader — a co-author of a communication-law book, so not someone to be dismissed lightly on this subject — suggested that emails from the chair to all of a department’s professors should list their addresses on the “Bcc” line, and announce the scope of the message’s distribution in the body of the message (e.g., “this email is being sent to all department faculty”). That would certainly cut down on the number of replies, but I wonder if this strategy would strike faculty members as the chair looking to shut down discussion? While Bcc has its uses, and this writer advocates transparency, I feel like I’ve seen it used more often for nefarious than benign purposes.
Finally, on a lighter note, a friend called my attention to a book being published in September by Indiana University Press, Philipp Stelzel’s The Faculty Lounge: A Cocktail Guide for Academics. It’s a fun read, and the “experiential learning” component of the book — you know, trying out the drinks — is a much-deserved recompense for those chairs who partake. Of particular relevance to our conversation is a drink called the Reply All Email, a rye-based cocktail that carries this tasting note: “Take a deep breath as you read yet another email replying to the original sender ‘Congrats, Jack!’ or demanding in all caps ‘PLEASE TAKE ME OFF THIS LIST IMMEDIATELY,’ and enjoy.”
