Perspectives From a New Department Chair

After three challenging and exciting years as a new chair, I am presenting the following thoughts—some per-haps profound, but the majority quite trivial about my perceptions of a new chair. Many of my comments pre-sented are based on informal observations; however, there was an opportunity for me to review the research about the roles and responsibilities of the department chair in higher education. For organizational purposes, this pa-per is organized into the following sections: the impor-tance of chairing a department, characteristics of chairs, preparation for becoming a chair, and the often-conflict-ing management and leadership responsibilities. Importance of Chairing a Department The chair job is the most difficult on campus in many respects. First, the continuous need for attention to details, second the need to make decisions which have an impact on the lives of those with whom you also deal on a personal basis, and third, when things go wrong the chair carries directly or indirectly a good share of the responsibility. (Bennett, 1982, p. 52) Few would argue that chairs are important in the over-all academic leadership team on campus. As early as 1942, the chair was characterized as the key position in a department and in the institution (Jennerich, 1981). Fur-thermore, an editorial in The Journal of Higher Educa-tion noted that “no one plays a larger part in determining the character of higher education institutions than th