Last year after I became a department head for the first time, I wrote about my initial thoughts on assuming administrative duties at my university. Now, near the end of my second year in the chair’s job, I still don’t have a clear answer to questions such as “How’s it going?” or “Do you like being a department head?” My typical (and reasonably accurate) answers are “Fine, I think” and “Not really, but it’s OK.”
In my first year as chair, I spent a lot of time attending orientation sessions, workshops, and panels on leadership and management. I read books, articles, and essays and talked with longtime administrator-friends and colleagues. Some of that information was useful right away; most of it was not, at least not in any obvious way. Nevertheless, I think it was good to do all that orienting because it helped me organize my thoughts, reflect on what I was doing (and why), and meet some interesting people.
This past year I have done a few more of these intro-to-administration experiences, and have on occasion found myself on the other side of the table, speaking on a panel to rookie administrators about what I learned in my first year. I am not sure if I have helped anyone, in large part because some of the major challenges we each face as administrators are quite specific to our departments or units. For example, in one such panel discussion, I presented a few general examples of problems that I had found to be particularly challenging. I selected issues that I thought might be common.
However, when the forum was opened to questions, no one wanted to talk about the issues that I had raised. Every question was about some very specific tricky problem that the rookie chair was facing—in many cases as a result of the culture and personalities in that particular department. These are the types of problems that can take up a lot of time and emotional energy and are difficult to solve (and to get and give good advice about).
Another feature of the past two years has been that I am occasionally asked to comment on my “path to leadership.” I have used the “path” metaphor myself in this context, such as a few years ago when some colleagues suggested that I might be effective in an administrative position. Even so, although the “path” concept might be relevant to the future (as an image of some potential future directions to take), it doesn’t work so well as a metaphor for the past because “path” implies that I was on a particular trajectory, with a particular destination. More accurate descriptions for me would be that I parachuted into my current position (after a bit of a push), or that I wandered around bushwhacking in a dense and somewhat unfriendly forest before accidentally stumbling into the administrative sector.
In other words, I did not spend years preparing for my current role. I did not have the types of experiences that are typically recommended for those on a “path” to an administrative position. Until now, the only time I was even chair of a committee was a brief, one-time event.
In the past, my department heads had always selected faculty members other than me for significant committee leadership posts. In one case, I had been very active as a member of a committee for seven years. I was the only female member of the panel, I’d been reappointed repeatedly, and I had even served as acting chair when the regular chair was on leave. However, when it was time to select a new leader for the committee, my department head chose someone who had never served on it before. He then assigned me a task that had previously been the job of a staff member in the department. I did that task for a couple of years, then asked the department head if he would assign it to another faculty member. He said there was no one else he could ask to do that sort of thing, and the task went back to being the responsibility of an office staff member.
Things actually went downhill from there. At one point my main service assignment in the department was to clean out a teaching lab that was filled with detritus, much of it attributable to senior professors who would never have been asked to clean out this (or any) room. I was clearly not on a path to any sort of leadership position in my department. That was not my aim anyway, although I would have appreciated having my abilities respected more.
I decided that being angry about the situation was not good for my health and happiness. I had many excellent and respectful colleagues within and beyond my department, and my professional life was dominated by positive interactions rather than the somewhat humiliating ones. So I focused on what I found most fulfilling: research, teaching, advising, and being active in professional service. I also started blogging.
And things got better with time. I know that I could have been more outspoken and aggressive and maybe I could have changed my situation for the better. But aggressive has never been my style, and I am at peace with that. To the extent that I have succeeded in my career as a scientist and teacher, and may eventually do some good as an administrator, this has been in part because I am relentless in working hard at everything that I do, and enjoying it. I am assertive but not aggressive. Also, although something of an introvert, I like working with people.
I don’t want to go so far as to say that it’s a good thing to have no classical, practical preparation for an administrative position. And yet I think that my experience shows that you don’t have to get on any particular path to leadership in academe.
That is, you don’t have to be groomed to be a leader, and you don’t have to have a mentor who shows you the path (although it’s great if you do). You can develop relevant skills through other professional experiences like managing a research group or being involved in administrative work as part of professional service. And you can learn how your institution works through service beyond your department or institution (that was the case for me, in part because of the scarcity of senior female faculty members in STEM fields).
Another thing that helps is if certain faculty members leave or retire, although outlasting disrespectful colleagues is not the most satisfying or effective strategy.
As I approach the end of my second year as a department head, I feel like I have some of the routine aspects of the job figured out and I might even be starting to get used to the fact that something new and unexpected is going to happen just about every week—something for which my previous experience may or may not have prepared me. If there is a metaphor for that, it would likely be a mixed metaphor—like one involving herding cats while juggling flaming tea cups on a rocking boat in uncertain weather. Or maybe that is too dramatic, considering how much time I spend sitting at a desk, reading, writing, and signing documents of various sorts.
Nevertheless, although lacking a clear path to this point (and beyond?), I think I can say that I am at least on track.
