Like much of higher education lately, two-year colleges are having a harder time finding faculty members willing to serve as department chairs. Leading a department can be a thankless job, with long hours for not much extra pay. You’re perpetually stuck between a rock (the faculty) and a hard place (the upper administration). And the uncertainties and stresses of the past two years have only made the position more difficult.
But wait: I meant to be making the case for why you might want to lead a department.
In fact, for me, it’s not a hard sell. Of all the jobs I’ve held during my 36-year career in higher education, department chair was my favorite. It was the one in which I had the most direct impact on the quality of both the work environment for faculty members and the educational experience for students — not just for a few dozen students in my classroom but for thousands of them in lots of classrooms.
Yes, the chair’s position can be frustrating at times. But I found it extremely satisfying to go home every night (OK, most nights) feeling like I had made a difference.
That is reason enough for good people to serve. But there’s also the inescapable fact that, if you want a career in academic administration — if you hope to “move up” and become a dean, a vice president, or even a president one day — department chair is the first rung on that ladder. Manage that first rung poorly and you very likely will not rise any higher.
How to best prepare yourself to succeed in the chair’s job is my focus here. This column is aimed primarily at future department heads at community colleges because that sector is where I have spent most of my career. But some of the advice below would apply at any type of institution. I write as someone who has spent 10 years as a department chair, at two different two-year colleges, then went on to become an academic dean and program director before returning to teaching full-time. I’ve also served on numerous hiring committees for chairs, deans, and vice presidents.
If you hope to lead a department, perhaps in the not-too-distant future, here are some things that you can and should be doing right now:
Beef up your “leadership résumé. Of course when you apply for most faculty positions, you submit a CV rather than a résumé. Your “leadership résumé,” however, features the administration-related details of your career — skills and experiences that are usually buried on a CV.
If you’re applying to chair a department for the first time, you will naturally be perceived as lacking formal administrative experience. That doesn’t disqualify you. After all, everyone who has ever been a chair wasn’t one before they got that first appointment. Still, it helps to be able to list a few things that demonstrate your leadership ability.
One way to acquire such experience is to chair a committee. Volunteer for one that requires a lot of work, like a curriculum or a promotion-and-tenure committee. Once you’ve served some time on those bodies, put yourself forward (you want to seem eager but not pushy) for leadership positions on the committee — chair, co-chair, or subcommittee chair. Chances are, if you’re willing to serve in one of those time-consuming and often thankless roles, you will eventually have the opportunity to do so. Noting on your leadership résumé that you chaired a promotion-and-tenure panel for three years will be a strong point in your favor when you seek to become a department head.
Another option: Toss your name in to serve on collegewide elective bodies such as a faculty senate or faculty-affairs council. Again, be careful not to come across as nakedly power hungry. But since most faculty members aren’t interested in those positions, if you are, you should eventually have the opportunity.
A third way to enhance your experience on this front is to take a leadership-development course or program. Last year, Manya Whitaker wrote about one type of program: “I Went to a Boot Camp for Department Chairs. Was It Worth It?” A few months later, I wrote about three ways to train future leaders: off-site retreats and workshops, on-campus programs that bring in outside experts, and the good old DIY approach.
Take advantage of any leadership training that your institution offers faculty members. If it doesn’t offer any, you may be able to get an internal grant to participate in a three- or four-day program, either online or on-site somewhere else. A good leadership course is definitely worth your time.
Cultivate relationships. The problem with actively pursuing leadership roles — rather than simply waiting for them to fall into your lap (as many of us in the older generation did) — is that you can indeed appear to be a “climber.” But if you wait for one of those roles to come to you, you might be waiting a long time, and it might never happen. So if academic leadership is the career you want, it’s much better to actively pursue it — just not to the exclusion of all else and not in ways that will make you seem calculating or manipulative.
You can’t join or move up the administrative ladder without people who can speak on your behalf, both informally and in recommendation letters. Your goal is to cultivate friends and allies by building real connections with folks across the institution that, like all positive relationships, are beneficial to both parties. Most of these relationships — true friendships — might never be particularly helpful to you as you move into administration. But some will be, and you never know which ones.
Remember what you mom always said? Or at least my mother always said this: “To make a friend, be a friend.” Even among naturally introverted academics, there will be people with whom you share common interests, with whom you can enjoy lunch or play racquetball, with whom you can work and collaborate. You just have to seek them out — not because they can be “useful” to you later but because you can help each other now. That some of these friends will, indeed, be good to have as you move up the administrative ladder will be a bonus.
The same principle applies, but even more so, in your dealings with your mentors. As you learned in graduate school, mentor-mentee relationships are vital to the academic enterprise. You might assume that’s mostly the case early in your career, and that the value of mentors fades as you progress up the faculty and administrative ranks.
But good mentors can be equally important to your career aspirations in administration — especially as you seek out people who are already in the management pipeline and willing to take you under their wing. These leaders can give you advice on moving up in general, on navigating the professional terrain at your institution, and about specific positions as they come open. As your mentors come to trust and respect you, you may even be able to hitch your wagon to theirs, so that as they continue to rise up the ranks, so do you. And they might have friends or contacts at other institutions should you feel the need to look elsewhere for an administrative role.
Get your credentials in order. This probably isn’t an issue at four-year institutions where most would-be chairs already have their Ph.D.s. But if you are teaching at a two-year college without a terminal degree in your field — as is quite common — you might want to consider getting that doctorate if you have administrative aspirations. At most community colleges, it isn’t absolutely essential for department chairs to have terminal degrees; many are hired without one. However, all things considered, a doctorate will almost certainly make you a stronger candidate — and you will need a Ph.D. if you hope to continue climbing the administrative ladder.
Keep in mind that going back to graduate school to get your doctorate could take three to five years or more, depending on how far along you are already and how much time you can devote to it. Your studies will have to be shoehorned in around your teaching, grading, committee assignments, etc. So plan accordingly. (On the bright side, many community colleges will pay for your doctorate and give you a nice raise once you finish, whether you ever become a chair or not.)
What if you have a long wait to land a chair’s job? Once you’ve documented specific roles and skills on your leadership résumé, established a support network, and acquired the necessary credentials, it’s time to start applying for the position. Some colleges rotate the chair’s job, so your odds of throwing your name into the hat and getting selected are good.
However, your options may be limited if the chair of your department is beloved and/or powerful, and looking to stay put in the post. In such a scenario, you may have to wait years for the current chair to retire, step down, or be promoted up the ranks. At least that will give you plenty of time to prepare for the role.
But what if you feel ready to start the chair’s job now? You very likely will be at the mercy of luck and other people’s timing — unless you’re willing to move to a different college. The job you want might not be available on your campus, but it probably is available somewhere else. You just have to look for it and get your name in the mix.
Understand that institutions tend to hire chairs from among their own faculty members, so even if a search for a department head is officially “open,” you will probably be up against some stiff internal competition. But you never know. Maybe this college is actually looking for an outsider. Maybe your CV and interview will be so impressive, the college will choose you despite your outsider status. If nothing else, the experience of applying and interviewing will serve you well as you continue your quest, helping you refine your cover letter and hone your interview skills.
In the meantime, you can always look for administrative roles on your campus other than department chair — for example, some colleges have assistant or associate chairs. You might also consider other leadership positions such as director of the campus writing center or dual-enrollment coordinator. Such roles can be a good entry point to administration, so long as accepting them doesn’t require you to give up your faculty status. Basically, any leadership role you can add to your CV while still staying on the academic track will be helpful to your career in the long run.
If you really want to be an academic administrator, you can almost certainly become one. Just make sure you have the right credentials and at least some experience. Then exercise a little patience, and put yourself out there.
