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THIS article deals with the problems institutions face in training department chairs. Its suggestions apply to any academic department; however, it is hoped that the ideas and models presented will be of interest to both foreign language faculty members and administrators. In particular, the article is intended to draw attention to the availability of or, in some instances, the need for institutional involvement in chair training. The article uses the author's home institution, Michigan State University (MSU), as a model not to suggest that MSU's attention to faculty development is unique or superior but rather to illustrate the types of chair training the institution can profitably pursue to the benefit of faculty members entering the administrative ranks and, ultimately, for the good of the institution as a whole.
The division of the institution into discrete disciplinary units or departments remains the fundamental organizational principle at American colleges and universities today—this despite widespread agreement that integration rather than compartmentalization of knowledge ought to be the ultimate goal of higher education. It remains true that essential academic business—teaching, research, curriculum and program development, funding initiatives, peer review—is carried out within the department. The strength of an institution is generally measured by the strength of its individual programs, and these are usually housed within departments. Although different institutions may grant departments varying degrees of autonomy, the management of individual departments ultimately affects the overall success of virtually all institutions.
Foreign language departments are no exception. The fact that language and literature teachers are uneasy bed-fellows in some units, that different national languages and literatures may be at odds in others, and that such interdisciplinary. programs as comparative literature and applied linguistics have trouble finding homes at some schools simply underscores the fact that colleges and universities tend to be driven by discrete disciplines.
It stands to reason that the institution has much at stake in the appointment and performance of its chairs. Mistakes, misjudgments, and otherwise careless performance by chairs can weaken departments; more serious can bring on painful and costly litigation. And the job is not an easy one; chairs are expected to carry out multifarious duties within numerous areas of activity: department governance, instruction, faculty affairs, student affairs, external communication, budget and resources, office management, and professional development. The faculty expects chairs to secure funds, resolve conflicts, solve problems, promote the department's fortune, promote the individual faculty member's fortune, be fair and supportive, provide vision, and advance unit quality. The dean looks to the chair to advance productivity and quality, administer higher-level decisions, communicate the institutional mission, nurture colleagues, promote morale, refrain from creating problems, bring the department programs into congruence with the university's mission, and protect the university. 1
Given the crucial managerial role most chairs play, it is curious that so little attention is paid to the manner in which chairs are chosen and trained. Typically, new-chairs are picked from within the faculty ranks on the basis of factors that have no direct bearing on managerial skills. Chairs must have academic credibility to successfully exert leadership; this credibility rests on scholarly reputation, on teaching record, on respect within the profession, on the trust of colleagues—not on the ability to adjudicate grievances, to oversee dozens of different budget lines, or to rank the innumerable tasks facing a chair within an at times bewildering institutional bureaucracy.
Outside searches are, if anything, even less geared toward securing effective managers. The department that brings in a chair from outside will seek a return on its investment in terms of national prominence; usually scholarship, professional distinction, and overall stature in the field are the primary criteria for appointment, and administrative experience is farther down the list of desirable attributes. Furthermore, the candidate least objectionable to the faculty may win out over the one with most promise as an academic leader. The imponderables of personality, character, and department politics weigh heavily in the process of choosing a new chair.
Exacerbating the problem of selecting a chair is the simple fact that professors are not trained to be managers. Indeed, in many places to be “faculty” means not to be “administration.” As early as graduate school, future professors learn to be mistrustful and skeptical of administrators. Such sacred concepts as academic freedom and peer evaluation are rooted in the concept of a self-governing faculty. The unionization of the faculty hinges largely on the willingness of professors to concede the right of peer review to administrators. In extreme cases, the chair's position is seen as a necessary evil, a dirty business, an onerous responsibility best kept to short terms and rotated among faculty members—none of which bodes particularly well for the success of a chair.
Interestingly, the problems that arise when professors are asked to become managers are not unique to academia. Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Jay W. Lorsch and Peter F. Mathias ask what happens “when professionals have to manage.” They note that management can be an “uncomfortable, almost dirty word” to business professionals (78). In the following passage, they describe the dangers of the conventional methods used to select managers; substitute “professor” for “producer” and “chair” for “manager,” and their remarks apply with equal validity to the university:
This conventional approach has obvious shortcomings. If you take your best producers and make them managers, you lose their professional contributions and risk making them dissatisfied over time. Most professionals build their identities around their work. They chose their careers because they found the work exciting and challenging—not because they wanted to be managers. Moreover, much of the nature of management work conflicts with the very things that make professional work so exciting. (79)
The solution to this problem in the business firm, according to Lorsch and Mathias, is the “producing manager,” who is “both formally responsible for management activities and actively engaged in the production of client services” (79). The ideal organization, they argue, is one made up of a number of units, each headed by a producing manager, resulting in an enterprise that “has a relatively flat structure, without the layers of hierarchy so familiar to corporate organizational charts” (80)—a model not unlike that of an academic institution comprising a series of departments.
But in business as well as in academia, the key to the success of this model is “the right combination of professional and managerial skills” (80), which brings us back to the problem of how chairs, regardless of their professional skills (teaching, research, service to the profession), can obtain the necessary managerial skills to make the system work. In short, how does a chair learn to be a chair? If trial and error, trial by fire, and trial and tribulation are less than satisfactory models, what more formal mechanisms can be instituted to assist the already accomplished professor in becoming a successful manager? Certainly experience on advisory or steering committees, the mentoring of past chairs, publications on the role of academic chairs, and interaction with a helpful and supportive dean are all potential means to this end, but they involve piecemeal, anecdotal, and perhaps unreliable advice (for useful published sources on the role of the chair, see Tucker and the Jossey-Bass series New Directions for Teaching and Learning). National organizations such as the American Council on Education (ACE) and the ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education regularly offer materials relating to academic management; AGE also sponsors workshops on chairing departments and conducts a national administrative leadership program consisting of a yearlong series of seminars and meetings involving selected fellows and national experts in academic administration. Closer to home, ADFL organizes its summer seminars with a particular view to addressing timely issues facing chairs nationwide; the seminars also include workshops for new chairs.
Ultimately, the institution itself has a primary obligation to assist in the training of chairs. The unique culture of each individual institution will determine what sort of training is best implemented. An informal survey of large public universities in the Midwest reveals that concern about support mechanisms for chairs is indeed widespread among central administrations, although the means of supplying such support vary widely. In one innovative intercollegiate faculty development program, the universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), comprising the Big Ten universities (eleven with Penn State) plus the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the University of Chicago, sponsor an academic leadership program for four or five selected colleagues from the member institutions. Chosen on a competitive basis, the participants attend a year-long series of seminars on academic leadership issues conducted by experienced senior administrators from CIC schools. The sites for the workshops rotate, so that participants can observe firsthand the administrative structure of the different campuses. The program emphasizes the development of leadership skills necessary to effectively guide academic units at a time of increasing pressures on higher education, particularly in the public sector.
At Michigan State University a comprehensive plan for academic management training has developed over the years, and although none of its component parts is unique, the program as a whole can serve as an effective model for leadership training at other institutions. 2
The training of new chairs at MSU takes place within the larger context of development programs intended for all faculty members. The number of such programs has increased in recent years because of the rapidly changing demands on higher education, as the administration has acknowledged: “Faculty development activities are recognized to be of critical importance as institutions reposition themselves to meet the demographic, social, and economic challenges of the future” (“Faculty Development Programs” 1). In addition to assisting faculty members, staff, and administrators in developing strategies to integrate the primary missions of the university (research, instruction, and outreach—the preferred term for service at MSU), the programs are designed to prepare faculty members to respond to changing circumstances in higher education, to provide them with new academic opportunities at all stages of their careers, and to “encourage and publicize programs through several units rather than through only a single faculty development office” (1). This last point is an important one: to meet the diverse needs of faculty members in many different academic areas and to bolster their own credibility, leadership programs should involve expertise from a wide variety of sources and not just the central administration. Faculty development at MSU involves numerous offices besides academic human resources, including computing and technology, university outreach, research and graduate studies, international studies and programs, and the university libraries. Individual colleges, schools, and departments also contribute significant support programs and can seek expertise for faculty development workshops in offices across campus (e.g., affirmative action, planning and budgets, general counsel, controller, labor and industrial relations, educational administration, and governmental affairs).
Under the more general rubric of faculty development fall the award and grant programs, like those available at most universities. These incentives are designed to encourage, recognize, and reward outstanding performance by faculty members in instruction, research, and outreach. The university also offers a series of programs and workshops designed more specifically to foster an awareness of the multidimensional role of faculty members at a large state university. The process begins with an annual new-faculty-member orientation that emphasizes MSU's particular mission and priorities. A supplemental workshop entitled “Survive and Thrive” helps probationary tenure system faculty members to become acquainted with personnel practices and to learn about the faculty support available at the university. The following are some further examples of programs available to foster faculty activity:
Instruction: Curriculum development workshops; computing and technology short courses; diversity workshops; and the Lilly teaching fellowship program (funded by a grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc.), which pairs junior faculty members with experienced mentors to provide opportunities for the improvement of teaching skills. “The program is meant to encourage teaching fellows to become future faculty leaders and models for their peers, as well as to inspire a broad range of faculty at all ranks and to develop new and enhanced programs that emphasize and sustain teaching excellence” (“Faculty Development Programs” 8).
Research: Workshops on strategies and procedures for obtaining research grants; computing and technology short courses; universitywide faculty seminars; and a sabbatical leave program.
Outreach: “Meet Michigan,” a program funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and similar to those in several other states, is designed to introduce new faculty members and administrators to the numerous interactions between MSU and communities around Michigan. A group of approximately thirty-five faculty members spends three to four days each spring touring Michigan communities and visiting university outreach programs. Although particularly geared to the land-grant mission of MSU, the program underscores the increasing necessity for all types of institutions of higher learning to engage in active educational interchange with individuals and groups beyond the campus border.
MSU sponsors a series of half-day workshops specifically for academic-unit administrators (deans, directors, chairs) to acquaint them with university policies and procedures; special invitations are issued to newly appointed administrators. The facts transmitted are vital not only for administrative efficiency but also for compliance with state and federal regulations, and the personal introductions to the individuals and campus offices to whom administrators can turn with future questions or problems are perhaps even more important.
The following workshops for administrators are offered regularly at MSU (descriptions are taken from “Faculty Development Programs”):
Employment of International Faculty and Academic Staff: “Provides a policy overview of federal immigration laws and regulations that relate to the appointment of international faculty and academic staff.” Given the bewildering recent series of changes in the immigration laws, this workshop is of particular importance for foreign language department chairs.
Personnel Policies and Procedures: “The Assistant Vice President for Academic Human Resources and for Human Resources [university support personnel] discuss their areas of administrative responsibility and outline the context for interaction and service between academic units and their areas.”
Personnel Policies Related to Employment: “Review and discussion of the hiring procedures for faculty, academic, and support staff,” with special emphasis on affirmative action compliance.
Faculty Performance Review: “Information and concepts related to performance review/feedback and performance enhancement of faculty.”
Legal Affairs, Grievances, and Complaints: “Legal issues, grievance procedures, and complaint management.”
Office of the Controller and Issues in Academic Governance: “Discussion of business and financial practices and the role of the Controller's Office … description of MSU's academic governance system.”
Drug-Free Workplace and the Employee Assistance Program: “The role and responsibility of academic administrators with respect to substance abuse in the workplace and the role of MSU's Employee Assistance Program.”
Planning and Budgeting: “Planning and budgeting procedures and issues at MSU,” including attention to long-range and strategic planning.
Governmental Affairs and Outreach: “The roles of the Office of the Vice President for Governmental Affairs and the Office of the Vice Provost for University Outreach … includes a discussion of the context for interaction, support, and service between academic units and these two offices.”
As the need arises, additional workshops are added. In response to new civil rights legislation in the areas of employment for the handicapped and sexual harassment in the workplace, for example, the university sponsored mandatory workshops for all administrators. In such areas it is in the clear interest of the institution to ensure that administrators are fully informed of the law and are apprised of potential problems and strategies for achieving compliance.
The workshops described above are aimed at helping administrators manage units within a large, complex bureaucracy that must answer to state and federal regulation. Much of their subject matter thus falls into the category of policy and procedure. Although it is clearly imperative for good management that an administrator be well versed in such areas, this knowledge alone will not ensure strong departmental leadership. A good bureaucrat is not necessarily a strong leader.
In addition to sponsoring the administrators' workshops, MSU annually offers workshops specifically meant for chairs, since chairs have departmental duties and responsibilities that cannot be fulfilled through mastery of university policy alone: These workshops focus specifically “on issues of leadership at the department and school level. Case studies and in-basket exercises are used to develop discussions of such topics as diversity, management, decision making, personnel issues, program development and evaluation, governance, faculty development, student issues, budgeting and resources, and instructional improvement” (“Faculty Development Programs” 10).
At these workshops, experienced presenters address subtle and complex matters involving leadership skills and the chair's pivotal role as mediator between the department faculty and the university as a whole. For example, a June 1993 workshop, led by Karl Smith of the University of Minnesota, addressed such questions as: How can chairs help faculty members achieve university goals? increase faculty participation and maintain morale during difficult times? enhance collegial decision making? increase trust between faculty members and chairs? Discussion and group interaction on such questions are aimed at helping chairs identify and define areas crucial to their ultimate success as managers. Simply being aware of potential pitfalls can aid a new chair in developing a leadership approach. At one MSU workshop, for example, the following reasons chairs and directors fail were presented and discussed:
Although this listing is undoubtedly incomplete, it is lengthy enough to suggest that the institution is obligated to assist new chairs in developing the necessary skills for coping with a myriad of problems. Some failings cannot be addressed in a workshop, particularly those stemming from ingrained patterns of behavior such as being too kind or being indecisive. A review of the pitfalls suggests, however, that most can be effectively discussed and, at least in part, remedied in well-planned and well-conducted workshops.
While the institution has an obligation to assist in the managerial training of chairs, chairs have a concomitant responsibility to avail themselves of the resources available to them. Chairs who assume their positions with the attitude that the higher administration cannot be trusted regarding departmental affairs or who seek to go it alone are liable to remain isolated and ineffective. The first and perhaps most important lesson new chairs must learn is that they can only function effectively in partnership with other responsible administrators. At MSU, and I suspect at many committed and caring institutions of higher learning around the country, such partnerships exist, to the benefit of all involved.
1 This listing of chairs' duties and responsibilities and of the expectations of faculty members and deans is taken from materials prepared at Michigan State University by Theodore H. Curry II and distributed to participants at the 27 January 1993 workshop “Faculty Performance Appraisal for Academic Administrators of Michigan State University.” This workshop also provided the list of reasons chairs fail that appears later in the article.
2 I am grateful to Dr. Robert F. Banks, assistant provost and assistant vice president for academic human resources at MSU, for sharing his thoughts with me on the institution's approach to faculty development.
“Faculty Development Programs.” East Lansing: Office of the Provost, Michigan State U, n.d. (434 Administration Bldg., East Lansing 48824; 517 355–6550).
Lorsch, Jay W, and Peter F. Mathias. “When Professionals Have to Manage.” Harvard Business Review July–Aug. 1987: 78–83.
Tucker, Allan. Chairing the Academic Department: Leadership among Peers. 3rd ed. Washington: American Council on Educ., 1992.
© 1994 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
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