August 2004

Full August 2004 issue of Academic Leader in PDF format

Look Before You Leap: Transitions from Faculty to Administration
By Cheryl Achterberg, Ph.D.
The leap from a faculty position to one in administration is full of risk. When this transition fails, faculty and their universities lose a great deal of time, training, resources, and opportunity. Few of us can afford such losses.

Holding Effective Meetings
Poorly run meetings leave participants asking questions like, what are we here for? What do we want to accomplish? Did I need to be there? Why were these decisions made? When a meeting seems to be a waste of time, participants naturally feel frustrated, particularly when they have other things to do.

Academic Leaders Need to Make Student Retention a Priority
In this interview with Academic Leader, Wendy Powers, director of student retention at West Virginia State University, offers compelling reasons why faculty, department chairs, and academic deans should make student retention a priority, and she provides practical advice on how to improve student retention.

Chair Brings Department Back From the Brink
When Linwood Hagin accepted the chairship of the mass communication department at North Greenville College in South Carolina, he knew the department was in serious trouble:

• The original chair left, citing lack of support from the college.
• A second chair was asked to leave due to poor student evaluations.
• The department had no full-time faculty members and only two regular adjuncts, one of whom served as interim chair.
• The curriculum needed to be revised.
• Few students were interested in majoring in mass communication.
• The department lacked the technology to give students the experience they needed to pursue careers in the field.

Bulletin Board
HERI Faculty Survey; Distance Learning, Reconsidered; Entrepreneurship Programs Expand; “Building the Academic Deanship: Strategies for Success”

Department Chair Best Practices
By Don Chu, Ph.D.
Publicly displayed symbols are powerful reminders of what the department values. Congratulations for jobs well done given at department meetings or in memos (with copies to the dean) not only serve as a pat on the back for faculty, but they also communicate what the department values.