Your role as a Department Leader involves many new responsibilities and building new relationships across the College. This position comes with challenges and opportunities to grow and will certainly never be boring.
Please see the newest Department Leader Handbook (2023) which provides helpful orientation info.
The IAs are here to help you navigate the transition, and assist with some key areas of your job: mentorship/connecting with other department leaders, developing a department online/blended learning strategy, annual program reviews, program renewal, hiring and orienting new faculty, developing faculty teaching skills, and curriculum development and revision.
Three key transitions for new department leaders described by John Bennet (cited in Hecht, et. al) are:
Irene W. D. Hecht, Mary Lou Higgerson, Walter H . Gmelch, Allan Tucker. “Roles and Responsibilities of Department Chairs.” The Department Chair as Academic Leader (Phoenix, AZ: ACE Oryx Press, 1999). Chapter 2. Retrieved from http://college.emory.edu/faculty/documents/articles/power-of-department-chair.pdf.
The framework below for a department leader’s responsibilities falling into 8 core areas can be useful for both understanding and being effective in your role.
Image based on roles identified in Hecht, et.al. (1999)’s paper “Roles and Responsibilities of Department Chairs" (PDF).
The Instructional Associates host a bimonthly department leader community of practice. This informal forum for academic leaders from across the College is an opportunity to share ideas, expertise, practices, and perhaps even challenges. For these gatherings, we use the "Communities of Practice" model (Wenger 1998), which means you're in charge of what's discussed - which topics are most important for you at that moment and each member of the group decides how much or how little to contribute.
Occasionally, CTLR will suggest topics based on feedback from surveys to department leaders about what they would like to focus on in upcoming sessions. You should receive Outlook invites to upcoming gatherings. If there are any topics you’d like to discuss, please email your ideas to the Instructional Associates.
