Great summary of the challenges of chairing a department. The responsibilities do far outweigh the chair's authority, but the chair does have considerable influence when it comes to setting priorities and getting things done. One of my colleagues at another university did a really smart thing in their first few months as chair, calling in each faculty member individually and asking for the one thing that wasn't working for them that they'd like to see changed. I wish I had had the imagination to do that when I was chair.
It's a great piece which pulled together a cat's cradle of regrets both personal and instututional from my past. The institution within which I spent most of my working life was dominated for decades by departmental chairs whose tenure was not time limited. Younger faculty growled about "the Barons". Departmental success around the pigs' troughs hung upon the character- and national and international reputation of its Baron. Baronial wings were clipped by the impositioin of a term-limit but extensions were frequent. Eventually in pursuit of economy "conventional departments" were fused. This in my opinion was a disaster. Not only did disciplines lose the integrity imposed in large measure by their discrete and relevant literatures but they also lost the sense of being corporate, of comprising teams. While those teams squabbled, one of the distinctive roles of the old chairs was that of constructive arbitration and the success of that often hung on intimate knowledge of the specific casus belli and of the combatants. The reform promised greater democracy but instead delivered a somewhat soul-less shapelessness from which I was sadly happy to escape. In brief, good chairs are creative sculptors and reliable triibunes. I'll bet anything that Professor Burke pulled that off wonderfully well.
Great summary of the challenges of chairing a department. The responsibilities do far outweigh the chair's authority, but the chair does have considerable influence when it comes to setting priorities and getting things done. One of my colleagues at another university did a really smart thing in their first few months as chair, calling in each faculty member individually and asking for the one thing that wasn't working for them that they'd like to see changed. I wish I had had the imagination to do that when I was chair.
It's a great piece which pulled together a cat's cradle of regrets both personal and instututional from my past. The institution within which I spent most of my working life was dominated for decades by departmental chairs whose tenure was not time limited. Younger faculty growled about "the Barons". Departmental success around the pigs' troughs hung upon the character- and national and international reputation of its Baron. Baronial wings were clipped by the impositioin of a term-limit but extensions were frequent. Eventually in pursuit of economy "conventional departments" were fused. This in my opinion was a disaster. Not only did disciplines lose the integrity imposed in large measure by their discrete and relevant literatures but they also lost the sense of being corporate, of comprising teams. While those teams squabbled, one of the distinctive roles of the old chairs was that of constructive arbitration and the success of that often hung on intimate knowledge of the specific casus belli and of the combatants. The reform promised greater democracy but instead delivered a somewhat soul-less shapelessness from which I was sadly happy to escape. In brief, good chairs are creative sculptors and reliable triibunes. I'll bet anything that Professor Burke pulled that off wonderfully well.