Relates one educator's experiences spanning 16 years as a department chair in both public and private universities. Considers what the role of a chairperson should be. (PA)

Presents a series of "self-evident truths" based on the personal experiences of department chairs. Groups the 22 truths into 4 areas: departments are cultural and social entities; departments are connected to other units as well as to various constituencies; there are personal skills, feelings, and values involved; and there are philosophical…

Describes how chairs of English departments can help their departments prosper in economic hard times. (SR)

Describes the management appropriate to different kinds of new curricula within the English program and urges the department chair to assume intellectual, as well as managerial leadership of the department. (HOD)

Exposes the myth of the department chairperson as omnipotent. Demonstrates that by identifying the common interest of the myriad components of an English department, a chairperson can unify them into a successful, dynamic department by power of the faculty members themselves. (HTH)

Discusses assessment with a focus on the speech communication discipline. Addresses the challenge communication administrators and educators continually face. (PA)

Offers a different (liberal arts) perspective on the job market for PhDs in English from an undergraduate department chairman. Asks for better information about graduate study possibilities. Argues that the problem is to learn how to better advise aspiring PhD students, and to provide support for them. (PA)

The department chair's responsibilities for program planning and development are discussed, embracing three broad areas: conception and development of new projects, application and inclusion of projects in the department's course of study, and cultivation of agreement and support within the wider college community. (LB)

Discusses components of credibility for academic departments from the local (on campus) view and from the cosmopolitan (disciplinary) perspective. (SR)

Discusses the role of the English department head in a time of shrinking budgets. Considers popular and governmental conceptions of college faculty productivity. Calls for increased attention to undergraduate teaching. Criticizes attacks labeling college faculty as lazy and incompetent. (HB)

Describes valuable aspects for the author of a career management workshop which emphasized a broad career horizon that included nonacademic career opportunities. Discusses her own and other people's pursuit of work and career to emphasize that it is both possible and urgent for people in English departments to change how they think about future…

Discusses how chairs might use information from a survey documenting the types of support and compensation that chairs in the Association of Departments of English community receive to negotiate a compensation package that is best for them during their term of office but also takes into account such other considerations as opportunity costs…

Offers advice to English department chairs: when talking to the dean, learn a new perspective, a new language (the language of college administration), and new skills; when talking to colleagues, be jargon-free and appeal to shared values; and when talking to students, be explicit about what the department has to offer. (RS)

Describes the author's experiences as chair, for two years, of the English Department of Fayetteville State University, a historically black university. Considers how as society shifts demographically to a more diverse society, the challenge for the English profession will be to adapt to this new and often incongruous mix of personal and social…

The centerpiece of former Governor Elliot Spitzer's education reform agenda was a set of performance agreements between the state and designated needy school districts. Known as Contracts for Excellence, or C4E, these agreements would eventually be linked to over a quarter of the new state aid proposed in the governor's first budget. C4E districts…