American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance - AAHPERD

 Issue: Nov/Dec 2004

Enhancing the Effectiveness of Department Chairs
Angela Lumpkin

Abstract:
The department chair is one of the most challenging positions in higher education. Advancing one’s department can occur by attending to the parameters that highly successful organizations have implemented. In addition to outlining the challenges of serving as a department chair, this article describes four requirements for dealing with, and successfully fulfilling, the responsibilities of department chairs: (1) to learn about and demonstrate leadership; (2) to understand the breadth and depth of four frames or organization—structural, human resource, political, and symbolic—in order to navigate within each; (3) to focus work in three key areas in managing day-to-day operations of their academic units: personnel management, instructional leadership, and budgetary management; and (4) to commit to moving beyond good to great.

Article category: Administration