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Newsletters:
In This Issue Current Issue Archives
November, 2005
| Academic Leader - November, 2005 - Full Issue … |
| Shared Leadership Makes Chairs Role More Manageable Most eligible (tenured) faculty members in the chemistry department at St. Olaf College had already served at least one three-year term as department chair and found that the two course releases per year did not give them enough time to administer the department while teaching and maintaining their research programs. As a result, the department faced the problem of having nobody willing to serve as chair. |
| Electronic Portfolios for Faculty Evaluation Tina Ashford, assistant professor of information technology, was among the first faculty members at Macon State College to use an electronic portfolio to support her bid for tenure. Although the portfolio’s format wasn’t a factor in her tenure bid, she found that it offered several advantages over the traditional paper-based format that might make it attractive both to individual faculty members and tenure and promotion committees. |
| Bullying in the Academic Workplace Emotional abuse in higher education is subtle but pervasive, and all academic leaders should look for indications of it and find ways to address it, says Kimberly Vess Halbur, assistant dean for student affairs at North Dakota State University. |
| The Unexpected Challenges and Rewards of Being Chair Before becoming chair of the University of Alberta’s department of biological sciences, Laura Frost knew a few things about the chair’s responsibilities. She served as associate chair for research and worked closely with the chair. Nevertheless, the role of chair brought unexpected challenges and rewards. |
| Strategies for Improving Faculty Morale in Times of Tight Budgets With an increase in faculty members’ teaching loads and diminishing resources, Barbara Brown, chair of the social science department at Georgia Perimeter College, became concerned with morale in her department. “I realized I was locked into a cycle of responding to negative events. So what I wanted to do, what psychologists always like to do, is to try to catch the good moments and note them. In an average day we don’t pay attention to the good things happening. We’re so busy paying attention to the negative things that we don’t stop to say what’s good or stop to think about what we can do to make things better,” she says. |
| Quick Quotes Mary Walczak, chemistry department chair at St. Olaf College |
