How to help your department through the hectic weeks before graduation
T.S. Eliot had it right when he called April “the cruellest month,” at least in academe. Especially if you’re a department chair on a semester system (as most institutions are), April and the first half of May are a race toward the finish. At this point, spring break has passed and you have roughly six weeks of instruction left. That’s not much time, and there’s so much to do before those mortar boards go sailing skyward.
These weeks of spring madness can mean that you’re exclusively managing, and doing very little in the way of leadership. Management is the part of the chair’s job that you have to do: finalizing course proposals, budget requests, personnel matters. 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. You have an opportunity now to do both: Besides bringing the academic year in for a safe landing, you can make a few investments — long range, high impact — that will pay real benefits down the road.
Continue reading: “Ask the Chair: The Post-Spring-Break Juggernaut,” by Kevin Dettmar
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