Over the past few years, there has been an endless series of survival challenges for universities and their leaders. While many of the recent challenges have been initiated by policymakers in the country’s capital, the crisis on university campuses feels nothing new. Leadership in the higher education world has been difficult for any number of social, political and economic reasons, and this may be harder and harder.
Navigating external crises is especially challenging for intermediate campus leaders, such as department chairs and center directors. Few of these people receive effective leadership training or support. In times of crisis, the collective failure of higher education to invest in fostering strong leaders has been fully demonstrated. Aside from lack of role preparation, the core ambiguity at the middle-level leadership between senior leaders and frontline teachers and students makes it an inherently difficult place.
On so many university campuses, department chair services have limited power, authority, time and resources. Chairs and directors may be exhausted or overwhelmed by the time we prepare to start the new school year. In the subsequent paragraphs, we provide some general principles that can help department chairs figure out how to use their often overlooked and underrated positions to support the collective well-being of their faculty, staff and students, which will surely be a challenging year for the coming year.
Accept what you can’t do (legally, morally, procedurally). Whether you tend to describe yourself in these terms or not, being a director or chair will make you a campus leader. As a leader, you assume the responsibility to exercise good judgment in accordance with institutional policies and in your actions and speech.
For example, a chair should not provide security assurances to individuals or legal counsel. Instead, a better move might be to connect faculty and staff with identified resources and let experts use their expertise. In a time of budget tightening, intermediate leaders should act cautiously in their commitment to financial support or informal assurances of continuing employment.
The Chairman has the right to make his entire rights a private citizen (protest, authors compatible and contact elected representatives), but they should be careful not to blur the line between their personal activism and official duties and positions. You chair a department that includes different people who may think and vote differently from each other. Currently, all of them need your full support for both customary and substantive university affairs. It is expected that teachers, staff and students will want you to set basic rules so that you can feel welcome, valued and safe in a polarized and terrifying world.
Exercise creative questions in your domain. At a time when it is highly charged, the chair should use all the tools in its arsenal, strategically adopt action and inaction.
Take action by supporting the connection moments of the hour, such as bringing some baked goods or inviting a colleague who seems overwhelmed to walk with you and chat on campus. If your department’s faculty loses support from federal grants, remember that their entire research program may be in crisis. And, if such a colleague is under review for tenure or promotion, you may want to have a timely conversation about reboot expectations about academic productivity.
As for inaction, a crisis is a suitable time, and it is by no means absolutely necessary. Off-campus turmoil requires energy and attention. Do your best to help the department separate the things that must be done now, these things with things that can be waited for. This may not be the time to ask for funds from external speakers. Delayed arrangements for faculty and staff retreats to overhaul the Capstone class for long-term revisions. Set some zoom, modest goals with this year’s Opener Meeting and ask your colleagues to ensure a shared to-do list is maintained. (We suspect this is easy to sell.)
Priority is given to stability management. Ashley Goodall argues that change, even necessary changes, tend to undermine our ability to find belonging, autonomy and meaning in our professional lives. Goodall provides the term “stable management” to describe what leaders do for their colleagues every day, especially when everything is constantly changing.
Stability management first needs to recognize what is effective and needs to be constant, but focus on preserving these things. Many faculty members may feel comfortable in the ordinary job of building course schedules, ordering textbooks, applying for travel funds, conducting teacher searches, and more. For some of your colleagues, business as usual may convey an implicit guarantee of moving forward in college life. This does not mean that you should ignore or downplay the severity of the crisis. It just means you can try to keep it from perspective.
Rituals and relationships also provide stability. If your department has a tradition of festive gatherings to mark the beginning of the school year, it’s time to attend such gatherings with all the joy you can inspire. And if your department lacks a happy tradition, this can be an opportunity for meaningful and much-needed change.
Delayed to campus experts. During the pandemic, campuses mobilized their public health resources in highly visible ways, such as appointing campus physicians and researchers to the decision-making team. The latest federal executive orders and policy requirements have forced the university to draw on a new set of experts, including international support staff, grant managers, lawyers and financial aid consultants.
Many of these trained professionals may work with affected individuals in specific, often technical, unique situations rather than serving on high-profile committees. Many of these sensitive conversations are best kept away from the limelight.
In other words, if you don’t see these efforts happening in public, the charity assumption is extended to mobilize campus resources to support those in need in the most meaningful way.
Hug – Don’t fight – the messy middle of serving as department chair. The true art of intermediate leadership depends on accepting its inherent duality, limitations, and freedom. Department chairs may not be able to issue extensive ordinances, but they have a great impact on climate and tone. Not all problems are the ones they want to solve, but they can always provide compassion and compassion. They can provide time and space for others to think about hard topics with respect.
In a vibrant moment, advanced ED requires intermediate leaders to enter the middle to act as interpreters, mediators and pipelines between certain warring factions between campuses. Send messages to the chain by highlighting the concerns of the most vulnerable members of the department in case these people have not yet received help. Point out that you want to appear in the campus town hall and read the central government emails carefully so that you can understand the teacher’s notice. If possible, reduce hostile communication, cancel baseless rumors, and make sure no one feels ignored or excluded.
Dedicated to the beauty of your subject. One of the most difficult parts of leading in a crisis is not only navigating external pressures, but also insisting that your spirit erodes slowly, and even the most resilient leaders can quietly wear out. If you are stuck in a desperate situation, you won’t be able to be the best version of your chair’s self.
The recent attack on universities has cut the core of many of us. It makes no sense to pretend that most of the work that happens in the college will address climate change, save American democracy or the right centuries of injustice. Any benefits to the world can be indirect and difficult to measure due to your teaching and scholarship.
Nevertheless, academic leaders can gain strength by thinking about the contribution of their chosen discipline to the common good. The greedy work you do as the department chair also makes it possible for students and faculty to deepen, enrich and expand their understanding of the world. Your work makes it possible for them to get closer and closer to realizing their dreams.
Their Work has meaning and value because it shows curiosity and openness to new ideas. your Sometimes, work may feel like a workout that keeps the train running on time, but you may remind yourself that as long as the college is true to its core principles, the train will move in a valuable direction.
As the new school year approaches, the unique position of intermediate leaders is a source of information, prudence, loyalty, focus and reassurance for faculty, staff and students in their direct impact. We can’t start predicting the year ahead, but we believe it is a year for students, faculty and staff to seek guidance from their recent leaders at hand on how to keep moving forward.
