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Advice for taking on a department chair role?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

This is really a molting-season question, but for those of us who are near, on the cusp of, or just barely past the tenure line, new service asks are showing up.

I'm particularly curious about folks who have stepped into a chair role at or relatively soon after tenure. Were you able to keep your research productive through that? Did you negotiate anything for accepting the chair role to keep yourself from getting swamped? Other strategies? Advice?

These are good questions. However, I suspect the answers may differ from institution to institution. For example, some institutions may have preset course offloads for chairs, but not be open to negotiating anything beyond that, whereas others may be willing to negotiate but not have preset offloads. So, it would be great to hear from readers with experience here. For my part, I served as chair (with a modest course offload) and was able to keep up my research just fine. But then, due to my teaching load I do most of my research during summers anyway, so it was mostly a wash.

Do any readers with chairing experience have helpful answers, experiences, or other insights to share?

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10 responses to “Advice for taking on a department chair role?”

  1. hw

    This is just an anecdote, but my dad was a department chair at a teaching university for over seven years, which then enabled him to move his career into administration. I think he preferred service work and admin to research and teaching.
    The best department chairs in my experience really care about the department and want to make improvements. When someone is doing it begrudgingly as a duty, the department suffers.

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  2. Department Chair

    I was appointed to Department Chair about a year after being tenured, and I’m finishing my term now. My research output dropped pretty sharply, as you would expect, despite the position coming with a significant teaching load reduction. More than anything I found the administrative firefighting to take up so much more bandwidth throughout the year, and being draining – I would have far preferred to be in the classroom instead. That said, it is nice as an academic to see some tangible improvements you’ve been responsible for, so there is a gratifying element to the position.

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  3. AnonyBons

    “Did you negotiate anything for accepting the chair role….” I would think that accepting the chair role is usually to be understood as a duty to one’s department. I don’t understand why someone would think that it is merely a “position” to be negotiated for. We work in departments and these provide for our livelihood and working conditions. Contributing service or whatever you want to call it to running the department is not a job (in my view) but part of making the whole system work. People should play their part in this system. Just my two cents.

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  4. Daniel Weltman

    I have been chair now for 8 months, my first time serving in the role.
    My research has stayed relatively productive, but there has definitely been a bit of a productivity hit. I was more productive prior to becoming chair and I anticipate becoming more productive after having been chair.
    Along the lines of AnonyBons I cannot really conceive of “negotiating” for something prior to assuming the role. This would be like negotiating for something in exchange for teaching my classes. What would my leverage be in the negotiation? Would I threaten not to serve as chair unless I get some sort of goodies? That’s just shoving the duty onto one of my colleagues. I can’t really understand any coherent understanding of this role according to which it would involve negotiation unless I was remarkably selfish, so much so that I would be ashamed to admit to it on this website! But maybe I am missing something.
    I think advice for this stuff depends a lot on contextual stuff specific to one’s department. So I don’t think I have anything useful to say on the topic generally.

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  5. universities are corporations

    @AnonyBons: in many institutions, such as my own, most faculty are already working well beyond the number of hours they are contracted to, and the institution (which… we have very little obligation to as a corporation, which is what it is and sees itself as) is basically exploiting us through increasing numbers of service tasks. If anything I think the opposite of what you are saying is true: people should not have an implicit agreement to not compete (once we are presenting things to the administration) for important service tasks, but to make clear that we have a scarcity of bodies willing to serve those roles and that it involves overbase work that we need to be compensated for. The way we all win is by someone setting a precedent by negotiating for as much as possible in exchange for agreeing to chair (say, but this applies to other things as well). This is especially important at private universities where faculty can’t unionize. I think it’s not a good attitude to think that we need to take on more and more work without compensation as some sort of obligation to our department or university. We are, at the end of the day, workers who work for corporations. We should demand as much as we can get from them, and negotiate at every chance we can.

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  6. universities are corporations

    @Daniel Weltman you needn’t think of your negotiation as hurting your colleagues–as I described above, it probably helps them. Departments should be aware that they are, as a unit, more powerful in terms of securing adequate compensation from their employers than alone. When one person negotiates for things in exchange for a service role, it sets a precedent for the next person to ask for the same thing. It’s got nothing to do with not fulfilling your duties to your colleagues–you are helping them by negotiating with your administration over how they can compensate you for the additional work you are doing. (Colleagues should also be very transparent with one another about what they asked for and what worked.)

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  7. universities are corporations

    And, yes, it is perfectly plausible and realistic to “threaten” (I wouldn’t put it this way–just to decline!) to serve as chair if you don’t get certain things. Again, this only helps your colleagues in their future role as chair. If there is only one person willing to do it, and they are only willing to do it under certain circumstances, the administration will be more motivated to make at least some of those circumstances happen.

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  8. AnonyBons

    @universities are corporations: “I think it’s not a good attitude to think that we need to take on more and more work without compensation….” At my university the chair role comes with a several thousand dollar stipend and several courses off. So it includes compensation, and I presume this sort of approach is common at other places. What I’m responding to is the further point about negotiating, thanks.

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  9. Daniel Weltman

    If the idea about “negotiating” is just supposed to mean that the department collectively should negotiate with the administration so that the chair position comes with some compensation, that’s fine (although I would encourage people to do this at a university-wide level if possible). But spearheading that effort is probably a bit ambitious for a first time chair. Let someone else do that, or do it yourself in a decade or two.
    I took OP to be asking whether they should negotiate for something for themselves, and I think it’s hard to imagine how that would work unless you have at least your whole department backing you up and also refusing to chair unless they get something, and ideally you should try to do this university-wide (or maybe school-wide if your university is divided into multiple schools etc.).

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  10. Mike Titelbaum

    Here’s one possible negotiating point: Depending on the structure of your department (who votes on what, etc.) and the current breakdown of seniority (how many full professors there are), it can be a really bad idea to be Chair without being a full professor. (For instance, in some departments only full professors are even allowed to participate in certain kinds of discussions about compensation, promotion, and/or hiring.) If you’re in that environment, it can be highly reasonable to refuse to take on the role without first being promoted to full.

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