Section 3C: Department Climate
How Chairs Can Facilitate a Positive Environment in Their Department
How Chairs Can Facilitate a Positive Environment in Their Department
From Facilitating a Collegial Department in Higher Education: Chapter 1
by Robert E. Cipriano
According to Chu (2006) department chairs can develop and maintain a productive atmosphere in their department by recognizing and implementing the following:
- Department climate is the chair’s responsibility. Chairs are called on to represent the department, assign teaching schedules, evaluate faculty members, and control the budget. Therefore, the chair can make the department conducive to a productive entity or a place where no one wants to spend time.
- Chairs can have a positive effect on the department environment by modeling the characteristics they wish their faculty members, staff, and students to exhibit. Chairs are symbolic leaders. They must treat everyone with respect and dignity if they expect the same from their colleagues. Do not fall into the ‘‘do as I say not as I do’’ syndrome.
- The chair position is a service position. Chairs serve the faculty so that faculty in turn can serve their students. The most important ingredient of an institution of higher education is the intellectual capital of its faculty. Therefore, faculty members must be supported, especially by the department chair who works closely with faculty members on a daily basis.
- Chairs need to be knowledgeable and competent. Chairs who are unable to perform the countless tasks associated with the position quickly poison the atmosphere in the department. Chairs are required to perform many tasks that have fixed deadlines.
- The chair’s work should be as transparent as possible. Information in the department, with the exception of privileged personnel matters, should be regularly shared. Budget, teaching schedule, advisee lists, short-term and long-range planning, mission statements, and so on should be translucent. Secrecy directly spoils the morale in a department.
- Chairs should see themselves as equal. Chairs need to see and deport themselves as no better or worse than other faculty members. Note that the chair serves an average of six years. He will most likely return to faculty when his turn as chair expires. Also, great ideas are not limited to one person. Chairs who consistently convey that they are equal to faculty will gain the trust and respect of their colleagues.
- Chairs must be objective. We all have our personal biases. The chair must not allow her personal interpretations to take over the department. The chair should listen to all sides, whether or not they are in concert with her beliefs, weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each side, and publicly convey the reasons the decision was made.
- Chairs must be credible. When a chair does what he says he will do, he is thought to be credible. Faculty members support the chair because he can be trusted to follow through on his promises.
- Chairs must respect all members of the department. Free department discourse can take place only in an environment built on trust and respect. The chair does set the tone. She must model respect for all individuals, both junior and senior faculty members, those who have a point of view similar to hers and those who do not, the staff, students, student workers, and so on.
- Chairs must be humble. Chairs who take credit for every success in the department destroy the climate in the department. Humility should be practiced with exactitude!
- Department climate is bolstered by demonstrations of appreciation for jobs well done. Public recognition should be part and parcel of a good department. Successes should be celebrated through announcements at meetings, published in department newsletters, e-mails, and in letters congratulating the accomplishment. A word of caution: do not overdue this and make a public disclosure for trivial things: ‘‘It’s great that Dr. Thompson met her class two times in a row.’’
- Chairs need to protect the confidentiality of the privileged information they receive. People’s private information must be treated with the greatest respect. A chair can lose his credibility and trustworthiness if confidential information is shared with other people.