September 1, 2005

Academic Leader - September 1, 2005 - Full Issue
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Matching Donor Interests with Problem-Centered Academic Programs
Department chairs and faculty need to play a larger role in fund-raising than they typically have in the past to appeal to today’s donors, say Susan Frost and Larry Hirschhorn, two higher education consultants who have developed a methodology that brings together faculty and the board of trustees to develop programs that address societal issues that donors are interested in.

Questions New Chairs Should Ask
As part of its new chair training, the University of Nebraska-Kearney has developed a list of questions that new chairs should ask people in key positions outside the department. The goal of this informal guide is to help new chairs learn the things they need to know to be effective and to establish relationships with key people outside the department. The following is a sampling:

Managing Faculty Workload to Reflect Differences Among Disciplines
Managing faculty workload is among the department chair’s most important tasks because it can have a major effect on program quality and on faculty and student satisfaction. The challenge is to balance the department’s needs with each faculty member’s unique skills and preferences, without giving preferential treatment to any faculty member.

Former Chair: Increased Scrutiny Reduces Planning Opportunities
When Sieg Wanke was chair of the chemical engineering department at the University of Alberta between 1985 and 2002, chairs were part-time administrators who had a reasonable amount of time for research and teaching and the ability to disperse any funds left over each year in ways that they thought would be of greatest benefit to the department. All this changed with major funding cutbacks and the introduction of new accountability rules.

Using Blackboard as an Intradepartmental Communication Tool
Recognizing the positive effects that the Blackboard course management system had on communication among students in his online courses, James Perry, chair of the Mathematics and Life and Natural Sciences Department and co-interim dean of arts and sciences at Owens Community College in Ohio, decided to see if it could also improve communication among faculty in his department.

Bulletin Board
Online research mentoring, Condition of Education 2005, ACE internationalization resources, faculty perceptions of distance education