Editor’s note: In the “Ask the Chair” series, the author of How to Chair a Department writes about departmental leadership. Read previous columns in the series here.
T.S. Eliot had it right when he called April “the cruellest month,” at least for those of us in academe. Especially if you’re a department chair on a semester system (as most are), April is just the worst, and not only because taxes are due.
April and the first half of May are a race toward the finish — then suddenly, on or around Mother’s Day, crickets. Glorious crickets. As I write, my college is on spring break. When I head back to campus on Monday, we’ll have just six-and-a-half weeks of instruction left. That’s not much time, and there’s so much to do before those mortar boards go sailing skyward.
I’ve written often here about the difference between management and leadership. The coming weeks of spring madness can mean that you’re exclusively managing, doing very little in the way of leadership. Management is the part of the chair’s job that you have to do; it’s also the part that the institution will make sure you do: finalizing course proposals, budget requests, personnel matters. There’s no way those tasks can be ignored, however much you’d like to. Leadership, on the other hand, is the gift that you give to your colleagues, and often the only part of the job that’s meaningful in the long run.
So I wanted to take a moment to remind department heads and program directors that, besides bringing the academic year in for a safe landing, you have the opportunity now to make a few investments — long range, high impact — that will pay real benefits down the road. Here are just a few, one for each of your primary constituencies:
For your faculty. Check in to see what they need for a productive summer. Then do what you can to make sure it’s in place.
Faculty summers take lots of different shapes. Some folks may be teaching summer-session classes, and for them, your support will look a lot like it does during the academic year. Other professors just don’t want to be bothered for three months — so leave them alone. But before they disappear from the campus, make sure to get any information that you might need from them at some point over the summer. Of course you can’t anticipate every email you’ll need to send before mid-August, but do them the courtesy of thinking through what might come up and aim to handle those matters before commencement.
For some portion of your faculty, summer break is an unpaid mini-sabbatical built into the academic calendar. What do they need to work on their next project? Will they need to use their campus office during the break? Make sure that they aren’t going to be prevented from doing so by any annual maintenance and cleaning often scheduled for these months. If they need access to departmental labs and equipment, including networked assets like printers, make sure that the staff who oversee those resources are around to assist.
At the most basic level, let faculty members who haven’t signed on to teach know that they’re really off duty until first-year students begin to arrive on the campus in late summer. Most of us aren’t paid for this time anyway (even if our nine-month salary is disbursed on a 12-month schedule). Give professors the gift of space and peace.
For your staff. Invite a conversation with every staff member about their plans and goals.
Some staff members work on nine-month contracts, and will tap out in mid-May and tap back in sometime in August. Your only responsibility is to wish them a pleasant summer.
Other staffers have contracts that keep them on the campus for much or all of the summer. Typically those months will be less harried than during the academic year. What might they hope to do with that additional bandwidth? As chair, your goal in these conversations is to listen, not to issue orders. And you will hear a range of responses:
- Some staff members may tell you their only goal for these quieter months is to work with more focus and intention. Or maybe they plan to work on long-term projects that become conceivable with the reduced pressure. Those are fine goals.
- If they ask for a more-flexible work schedule, do what you can to grant it. With fewer students on the campus, might it be possible to allow department-staff members to work a schedule that aligns better with their summer plans — whether that means flexible hours or additional work-from-home days? (And even if it’s not a formal policy of the institution, you may be able to offer them some flexibility without having to run it by HR.)
- Surely summer isn’t the time to load more burdens on department-staff members, but some of them may appreciate an opportunity to increase their skills. For those genuinely interested, summer is a great time for you to support their participation in professional-development opportunities — in graphic design, event planning, web hosting, or financial management. Institutions seem to be throwing new web-based systems at us faster than we can keep up: Maybe the summer provides a time for some triage.
For your students. Recognize the profound milestone your graduating seniors are about to achieve. That means taking the time to respect and uphold the institution’s end-of-year traditions.
In your faculty life, you probably didn’t have to oversee much event planning. But it’s part of the chair’s job, and each graduating class deserves the same level of attention as they make their way out into the world. You may have to oversee or organize a senior-class celebration or a faculty-student lunch for graduates. If your department has a tradition of giving each graduate a small gift, you may have to go shopping (or, at least, see that it gets done).
As commencement draws near, both graduating seniors and their instructors are running around with their hair on fire: It’s important, and meaningful, to have some intentional quiet moments in the run-up to make sure everyone soaks in and fully appreciates what’s happening.
For yourself. That’s right: You. You’ve worked as hard as those you support (and maybe even harder). Typically, summer is when chairs try to catch up on all of the things they didn’t get to do — research, writing, downtime — during the busy academic year.
Take the necessary steps to protect this precious time, whatever you’ve chosen to do with it. Coordinate with other department administrators (assistant chairs, graduate directors, staff members) to make sure that at least minimal coverage is in place for any department business that comes up while the place is short-staffed. And let the dean know how to reach you. (The arrangements will vary depending on whether you and the team have nine-, 10-, or 12-month appointments.)
And finally, make definite but flexible summer plans. Think about what you need, what you want to accomplish, and what level of engagement will be most comfortable for you. Some chairs prefer to hibernate almost completely in the summer and deal with the fallout, if fallout there be, on August 16. Others can’t relax amid a looming fear of what awaits them in the office, so they prefer to spend a couple of hours a week doing a minimal amount of department business.
Congratulations, chair: Whether it’s your first year in office or your 21st, you can see the finish line from here. Spend just that little bit of extra time over the next few weeks to make sure everyone feels supported heading into their summer.
