Paula M. Krebs is executive director of the Modern Language Association, and formerly dean of humanities and social sciences at Bridgewater State University.. She is on Twitter @PaulaKrebs.
Stories by This Author
Advice
Associations encourage graduate students to seek nonfaculty careers and then lose them as members. Here’s why that’s bad for both.
You’re a new faculty member, no doubt engrossed in your departmental duties. But the rest of the institution needs you, too.
Advice
Keep things professional no matter how much your colleagues talk about being a “family.”
Advice
Start your new job with a good sense of how to find out what they didn’t teach you in grad school.
![Wielrennen, Historie op de baan: Valpartij tijdens 6-daagse wielerwedstrijd op de Madison-Square wielerbaan New York, Verenigde Staten van Amerika, 1913 [ge뮳ceneerd]](https://chronicle.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a835c95/2147483647/strip/true/crop/527x395+137+0/resize/800x600!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fchronicle-brightspot.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fc2%2F71%2F97a7bd9340779c887f898f3eccd7%2Ffull-cycling-accident.jpg)
Advice
The worst way to start a deanship is by sharing your great ideas for how people can do things better.
Advice
The best guideline, a dean suggests, is to make the smallest mess you can.
Advice
... And other folks outside the classroom, too: You can improve your teaching by chatting with staff members who play a major but often unsung role in student success.
News
Tenure-line faculty members don’t have bosses. Administrators really, really do.
Advice
It’s important to know where the hiring institution or department actually has wiggle room; otherwise you’re just wasting your breath.
First Person
A longtime professor prepares to move into an administrative career.
