For faculty, being asked to step in and consider becoming a chair does not always follow a smooth or particularly well-thought-out process. The request might come during a phone call to an associate dean asking if she needs help while she is out of town for a funeral, or at lunch with a current chair. Most faculty, who have no management or supervisory training, need real support to make this transition, but today’s “lean and mean” university structure provides relatively few resources to help them.