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Mission almost impossible

ASEE Prism, Sep 2001 by Creighton, Linda

Running an engineering department can he one of the toughest jobs around. Those who've been one of the hot seat offer advice on how to make it work.

It's there in black and white over and over again, in the manual of policies and procedures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: If you're a student, faculty or administration member and you've got a problem or question: SEE YOUR DEPARTMENT HEAD. So where do you go for advice if you are the department head? Sorry, but you re on your own.

"Most people have no idea what they're stepping into," says Earll Murman, a former head of the department of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. "We don't provide any training for faculty who take on administrative leadership roles."

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Across the nation, engineering schools are filling the crucial posts of department head or department chair with promising academic stars or veteran faculty members who may or may not be well suited for the punishing demands of what may be the most rewarding, challenging and yet thankless job on American university campuses today. Being asked to head a department is something like the Groucho Marx joke about not wanting to belong to a club that would have you as a member. "You don't lobby for it," says Gil Emmert, department chair of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin's School of Engineering for nine years. "It's said that if somebody wants to be department chair, he's automatically suspect."

The post is the key link between a university administration and its faculty and students in developing a vision and direction for the department. But trying to implement that vision means building consensus among those constituencies-a process that can quickly drag down even the loftiest of intentions.

And on a smaller scale, resolving disputes among staff and faculty is a big part of the job. Department heads are confronted with personnel problems that can be thorny unpleasant, including sexual harassment, alcoholism, and even suicide. Some can expose a university to litigation. "It's just part of the job," says MIT's Murman.

Dealing with promotions, denied tenure and layoffs may be even harder, department heads say. "You're creating tenure dossiers and promotion dossiers for people that you care about personally," says Sherry Kerns, former president of the National Electrical Engineering Department Heads Association-who spent five years as chair of the electrical and computer engineering department at Vanderbilt. "You know the name of their dog. You've been to their children's birthday parties. And you have to tell them that they will no longer be working at the institution."

Not only that, the demands are constant and the hours long. "Somebody said this was a half-time job," says Fred Mannering, chair of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington. "And that means every other minute." It's a part-time job of 60 to 90 hours a week, often cutting the heart out of a professor's teaching and research. "My research programs took a real hit:" says Mike Meyer, until recently chair of civil and environmental engineering at Georgia Tech. "As department head in charge of a $20 million budget with 50 faculty, 60 staff and 1,200 students, I was managing a small business. You can't do that and teach and research."

And although they have the responsibilities of running a business, department heads don't have the latitude and resources of middle management in the world outside academia. Tenured faculty cannot be fired except for the most serious missteps. Incentives are few to entice professors or staff to take a new direction, with real budgetary decisions made above the rank of department chair. "The big management problem is you don't have a carrot and you don't have a stick," says Mannering of the University of Washington, who begins a new job this fall as department head of civil engineering at Purdue.

EXPERIENCE NOT REQUIRED

What kind of training or preparation do universities offer for such a uniquely demanding position? Virtually none. "It's a big weakness in the academic system that we don't provide any training for faculty who take on administrative leadership roles," says MIT's Murman. "Usually they haven't had any experience with personnel review or problem resolution." Murman says his previous position as vice president of a small company gave him insight and direction, experience most academics lack.

David Irwin, chair of the electrical and engineering department at Auburn for 28 years, taught a workshop for new department heads at the annual NEEDHA meeting this year, which over 40 of the 200 conferees attended. An hour and a half of open discussion is not much more than warning them about what's ahead, says Irwin, and giving them a few tips. "I don't have a silver bullet."

Why on earth, then, would anyone take this job? It certainly isn't for the money. At the University of Washington, Mannering's salary increased by $1,000 a month. At Stanford, mechanical engineering department chair Ron Hanson gets an extra $4,000 a year to manage 35 faculty members. Surprisingly, most department heads say that once they got their sea legs, it was immensely satisfying. "I felt I could make a difference," says Meyer of Georgia Tech. "And I believe I did."

Mission almost impossible

ASEE Prism, Sep 2001 by Creighton, Linda

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