The New Department Chair: 100 Daily Reflections for Mindfully Designing Your Term

(Hardback)

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Description

The New Department Chair: 100 Daily Reflections for Mindfully Designing Your Term, written by a chair with over a decade of experience at three universities, consists of 100 reflections about being a department chair. Using theory, personal stories, and practical advice, readers are provided with 100 opportunities to think through how they approach the complicated responsibilities of being chair. Topics include the precarious nature of academic management, the emotional labor of the position, advocacy, diversity and inclusion, budgeting, imposter syndrome, department meetings, bullies, social media, working with deans, enrollment management, and others. This collection serves as both a guide and a mentor in print for chairs as they wrestle with the complexity of their roles. Its not a manual but instead an invitation to engage the position with purposefulness and direction.

Reviews

Stepping into an academic administrative position as chair or director Do yourself a favor and buy this book! The short day-by-day format will help you create excellence in your faculty and students, manage stress, see the forest through the trees, mindfully reflect, and remember your core values all one bite at a time.yone who has become a department chair will find Myers unvarnished anecdotes about his missteps, lessons learned, and solid advice resonating with their own experiences. The benefit of these reflections lie in the way the author has personally navigated the paradoxes, vulnerabilities, challenges, and ambiguities of this managerial-leadership role that he says is akin to being a diplomat. Particularly insightful are sections on budgets, appeals and grievances, conflictual and productive relationships with all stakeholders, and chairs own legal liabilities and responsibilities for those whom they supervise. This is a must read!!

-- Patrice Buzzanell, Distinguished Professor, University of South Florida

Stepping into an academic administrative position as chair or director Do yourself a favor and buy this book! The short day-by-day format will help you create excellence in your faculty and students, manage stress, see the forest through the trees, mindfully reflect, and remember your core values all one bite at a time.

-- Sarah Tracy, school director and professor, Arizona State University

As a new chair, you often dont know what you need until you need it, and this book will help any new chair anticipate what they will need. Myers offers a communication-based field guide to being a new chairone that is timely, thoughtful, comprehensive and generous. The 100 reflections may be read in any order, at any time, according to frame of mind or the always-arising needs of the moment.

-- Heidi M. Rose, professor and ASL Program Coordinator, Villanova University

Myers draws on research and experience to capture the unique rewards and challenges of the department chair role. The book moves beyond equipping chairs to merely survive, and instead models a mindful approach to thriving in the role through a few minutes a day spent in purposeful reflection. Despite acknowledging that all departments and institutions are different, I found the anecdotes highly relatable. I wish I had this book when I was starting out in the role.

-- Sarah Stone Watt, Professor and Interim Associate Dean, Seaver College

Author Bio

W. Benjamin Myers is professor of communication and chair of the Department of Communication at the University of Toledo.