THE DEPARTMENT CHAIR Summer 2007 29

Review

Chairing Academic Departments: Traditional and Emerging Expectations

by N. Douglas Lees

Anker, 2006352 pp., $40.00 (plus $5.00 s/h)

Chairing Academic Departments beginswith a truism about administration thatmany would have to confess is descrip-tive of their own journey: “Like many ac-ademics, I took my first position with theintention of working hard to clear the es-sential hurdle—tenure—to a productivelife dominated by teaching and research.Administration was the furthest thingfrom my mind, and writing about it wasnot even a consideration” (p. ix).

Lees points out that it is all too easyfor professors to be tagged for theirunique leadership skills and before longfind themselves years into an administra-tive service because of others’ percep-tions of their strengths. The good news isthat being recognized as an educatorwith the talents and knowledge to guideothers in the department or college is anachievement coveted by many. The flipside of this news is to find yourself doingmore supervisory and administrativetasks while still being held to the expecta-tions of academic teaching and research.

This book presents the historicalbackground of what it once meant toserve or take your turn as a departmentchair, and what it means today in the 21stcentury to fulfill this role. The traditionalresponsibilities of this appointment arefairly straightforward. The author de-scribes the duties as functions: manage-ment, dynamic, and baggage. These threefunctions refer to routine duties such asscheduling classes, students, and facultyeach term; ensuring that programs andcurricula are properly developed, re-viewed, and updated; and aligning the

expertise of the facultywith the curriculum andresearch needs of the in-stitution. Running a de-

partment is related to the concept ofmanaging a business; there are quality is-sues to maintain not only in the contentof what is offered in the classroom, butby supervising and evaluating faculty in-struction. The chair is also a problemsolver with respect to students, faculty,and administrative concerns, keeping thepeace and smoothing out difficulties.Chairs must also develop and maintain abalanced budget to ensure that facultywill have the finances for their teachingneeds while not making waves with theadministration.

The advent of several externalchanges in legislation and governmentalbodies has affected the roles of the entireeducational system. No Child Left Behindand IDEA in particular have stronglymodified the way business is done inK–12 school settings and all communityand higher education institutions. Conse-quently, the chair inherits new responsi-bilities by virtue of the position and thetimes. Accountability in every area be-comes more pronounced and structured.Assessment of students, faculty, courses,and institutions has imposed additionallayers of monitoring and compliance.Some of these mandates require institu-tions to develop plans that demonstratetheir accountability and to pay closer at-tention to assessment, faculty workload,external program reviews, faculty evalua-tion and post-tenure review, civic engage-ment, compliance issues, and studentrecruitment and retention. Each of theseareas has been on the concern and qualitylist of educational institutions all along,but the mandate and monitoring of com-pliances from outside entities brings an-other layer of administrative need. The

business of managing the additional areashas simply been crowded onto an alreadyfull plate for the sitting chair. As the ad-ministrative roles and responsibilities in-crease, there is a developing concernabout how to meet them and maintainprogram quality as well as quality of lifefor the department chair.

Lees concludes the book with a hintabout how to succeed as a 21st-centurychair. It is important to see the evolutionof what the position and responsibilitiesof the chair were and what they are now.It is significant to know that anyone inthis administrative role needs to have thepersonal temperament for embracingchange and the leadership skills to makethe necessary and frequent change agen-das. Institutional leaders are seekingchairs who will step up to this challengeand lead with passion and integrity.

Leadership today and in the futurerequires individuals who are savvy com-municators, who work collaborativelywith others, and who have excellentpeople skills. Educational settings mustbetter utilize their people and their re-sources to embrace these challenges andto excel in the future.

Lees brings the reader to the conclu-sion that the current and future positionof chairing an academic department is“pivotal . . . not only in carrying out thedecisions of others, but for guiding deci-sion-making to ensure that there is basicsupport for change and for identifyingpathways in the transformation that pre-serve what we value from educationaland scholarly perspectives while adapt-ing to the new world order” (pp. ix–x).

This book seems to beg the follow-ing questions: How do I do this? Whatskills will I need? Why would I evenwant to do this? For those who have adesire to become a department chair orwho are currently endeavoring in that

Reviews

its attention to the implications of disci-plinary contexts for faculty work and itspractical and thorough suggestions forstrategies to use in evaluating faculty re-search. Chapter 11 is another particu-larly strong chapter. It reviews the uses,strengths, and limitations of variousstrategies for gathering feedback onteaching, including self-evaluation, stu-dent ratings, and peer evaluation. Chap-ter 13 considers the purpose and value ofprofessional portfolios that explain andrelate all components of a faculty mem-ber’s work. This useful chapter wouldhave been more appropriately placed innearer proximity to Chapter 8, whichconcerned teaching portfolios.

Although most of the chapters inthis volume discuss evaluation strategiesfor specific aspects of faculty perform-ance, Chapters 10 and 12 offer a broaderfocus on faculty evaluation. Chapter 10helps institutional leaders understandthe problems and mistakes that canoccur with teaching evaluations andhow to avoid these, and Chapter 12 dis-cusses the appropriate role and uses ofevaluation data in personnel decisions.Finally, Chapter 14 provides a usefulsummary of the important points andrecommendations in each chapter, pro-viding busy readers with an outline ofthe book in an easily accessible form.

We are enthusiastic about this bookand commend it for several specificstrengths. First, each chapter couples apragmatic approach with careful atten-tion to ensuring that the strategies sug-gested are informed by relevant researchand literature. Second, by addressing thethree major components of facultywork, the volume is more comprehen-sive than most books which typicallyfocus specifically on teaching evalua-tion. Third, we commend Seldin’s bookfor its balanced attention to both thebenefits of institutional programs toevaluate faculty performance and thechallenges to be considered and weak-nesses to be avoided. Chapter 4, for ex-ample, discusses both the uses andabuses of student ratings to evaluatefaculty teaching. Fourth, the book’s au-

30 THE DEPARTMENT CHAIR Summer 2007

role, this writing validates the positionas it really is and provides realistic guid-ance and hope that in true leadershipyou are a catalyst for change, for im-provement, and for making society a

better place within your hemisphere ofinfluence. I applaud this message. ▲

Reviewed by Joe Ann Hinrichs, chair of the Ed.D.Program at Walden University. Email:jhinrich@waldenu.edu

DOI 10.1002/dch.20012

Evaluating Faculty Perfor-mance: A Practical Guide toAssessing Teaching, Research,and Service

by Peter Seldin and Associates

Anker, 2006288 pp., $40.00 (plus $5.00 s/h)

Universities and colleges are increasinglyseeking ways to explain and justify theimportant work in which their faculty areengaged. Parents, students, legislators,employers, and the government under-standably are asking institutions of highereducation to be accountable for their con-tributions to society and, more specifi-cally, for the resources they use. Withinuniversities and colleges, decision-mak-ing pertaining to tenure, promotion, andretention of faculty requires appropriateand equitable evaluation processes. In ad-dition, faculty members themselves wantand need feedback that helps them en-gage in ongoing improvement in all as-pects of their work. In response to thiswidespread interest in evaluating facultywork, Peter Seldin’s new edited book,Evaluating Faculty Performance: A Practi-cal Guide to Assessing Teaching, Research,and Service, is a thorough, practical, andwell-written treatment of a range of spe-cific strategies for evaluating the teaching,research, and service components of aca-demic work. Institutional leaders—in-cluding presidents and provosts, deans,directors of assessment, faculty develop-ers, and members of faculty affairs andfaculty personnel committees—as well asindividual faculty members themselveswill find this book to be a state-of-the-artand very useful resource.

The books consists of three kinds ofchapters. Several provide an overview offaculty evaluation; a number offer spe-cific strategies for evaluating particular

components of facultywork; and some addressbroad institutional issues.The first three chapters ex-plain why a university orcollege should have a suc-cessful faculty evaluation

program, essential components to in-clude in such a program, key principlesthat help ensure effectiveness, and strate-gies for developing a climate whereteaching assessment, specifically, is val-ued. Chapters 4–9, 11, and 13 each focuson a particular aspect of faculty work—teaching, research, or service—and pres-ent specific evaluation strategies andways to ensure productive evaluation.Chapter 4 focuses on the uses and abusesof student ratings as tools to evaluateteaching. Chapter 5 offers recommenda-tions to assess faculty participation inservice on and off campus. Chapter 6emphasizes the usefulness of peer obser-vations and explores three differentmodels for departments to use in de-signing observation instruments. Chap-ter 7 pinpoints the contribution ofself-evaluation and reflection as part offaculty performance assessment and of-fers a framework, including a set of cre-ative reflection questions, for faculty touse in composing academic life narra-tives. In our view, this chapter is an espe-cially well-written and innovativecontribution to the literature on facultyevaluation. Chapter 8 discusses teachingportfolios as highly useful tools in theevaluation of teaching and highlights thedifference between portfolios for devel-opmental purposes and those designedfor use in personnel decisions. We wantto call readers’ attention to Chapter 9, asit is a particularly thoughtful discussionof ways to approach the evaluation of re-search. Strengths of the chapter include