One of the things I'm enjoying about being chair is tracking the accomplishments of my colleagues. It's surprising how many people present, publish, work on projects, and do curricular work for the department. There is a whole host of activities that are going on all the time which only the chair sees in a holistic way. Of course its hard to track all of this work in an organized way. This is partly because the English department I belong to has 59 tenure track faculty, 12 temporaries, and 15 teaching associates. That's a lot of people's activities to stay aware of, let alone synthesize in a meaningful way. Still, as I hear from more and more faculty about the things they are doing and working on, I am pleased to see the department seems to be really thriving.
November 2008 Archives
One of the things I've been thinking about as chair is how the role impacts your modes of thought. In the past, I always thought of people as colleagues and fellow teachers and, in select cases, friends. But being chair shifts the relationship you have with people. I find now that when I see people, my first thought is that there is an issue to be solved with this person as opposed to thinking, "oh, there's someone to say hello to." So to an extent, people change into problems. Now this is an exaggeration, to an extent, of course. Nothing really changes. But, I think this gives evidence to the manager role of the chair. As chair, I seem to have to track everyone in the department in a variety of ways. I'm always thinking about this or that concern each person has and this or that issue that I have to take up with them. So it seems, for me at least, that being chair has put me into a manager role that I mostly was able to work apart from as a regular faculty member.