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ONLINE TRAINING
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3/8/2012 12:00 AM
Spring Series
Our two popular online seminar series are back for Spring 2012. Series One: The Essentials will equip new department chairs to succeed in their role. Series Two: Best Practices offers academic leaders the best counsel available on handling the key challenges of the chair position.
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BOOKS
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The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal
From Parker Palmer, best-selling author of The Courage to Teach, and Arthur Zajonc, professor of physics at Amherst College and director of the academic program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, comes this call to revisit the roots and reclaim the vision of higher education. The Heart of Higher Education proposes an approach to teaching and learning that honors the whole human being—mind, heart, and spirit—an essential integration if we hope to address the complex issues of our time. The book offers a rich interplay of analysis, theory, and proposals for action from two educators and writers who have contributed to developing the field of integrative education over the past few decades. 

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    JOURNAL
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    Journal - front page thumb
    This quarterly periodical for department chairs and deans features practical advice, useful information, and up-to-date resources. Its applications, techniques, case studies, strategies, and guidance are directly relevant to today's academic leaders.
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    E-NEWSLETTER
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    SAMPLE ARTICLE
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    1/15/2012 12:00 AM

    What Deans Need from Chairs

    by N. Douglas Lees

    From The Department Chair Insider – June 2011, Vol. 2

    What Deans Depend on Chairs to Provide

    Productive relationships between deans and their department chairs are built on trust. Unfortunately, what we see in some cases is chairs who are out to get everything they can and thus resort to strategies that distort reality. This type of behavior makes things much more difficult for the dean to make the appropriate decisions and can come back to haunt the department if its past proclamations are not certified over time. A good working relationship where there is reciprocal credibility allows the dean to propose new ideas with the expectation that the chair will give honest feedback and, in cases where the suggestion would be difficult to implement, will suggest alternatives to meeting the proposal’s objective. Another area where trust is critical is seen most obviously in situations where the dean presides over the arts and sciences. Unlike the uniformity of the subunits in schools of medicine, law, engineering, or education, schools of arts and sciences span very different disciplines. Clearly, the culture, needs, salaries, space requirements, and tools of philosophy and physics are radically different. Should the dean be trained in philosophy he or she will be challenged, at least at the outset of the appointment, in weighing the request of physics for a new nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer. The dean will have to depend on the disciplinary expertise of the chair. Building trust between the chair and the dean will facilitate the work of both, allow departmental input into initiatives, and give greater credibility to requests that support disciplinary advancement.

    —N. Douglas Lees is associate dean for planning and finance at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis.