A study of 99 departments at 2 universities led to conclusions about the placement of female managers: (1) women were less likely to manage powerful departments; (2) they were more likely to manage those that were not growing, previously had women managers, or had high proportions of female workers; and (3) older departments were not less likely…

Discusses experiences with responsibility-centered management for communications programs at Indiana University-Bloomington. Points out three problems with university fiscal planning which bear directly on communications programs. (SR)

Explores the role of academic departments within contemporary comprehensive high schools. Argues for further research acknowledging secondary schools as fundamentally different from elementary schools. Department specialization and differentiation are key elements in understanding differences. A two-stage exploratory study shows that departments…

Discusses advantages of creating a strategic plan, steps for the strategic-planning process, and application of the strategic-planning process. Suggests that communication departments should develop a strategic plan and use it as a guide in collectively pursuing initiatives related to teaching, research, and service as well as in advocating for…

Suggests that working beyond the academy should be understood not as an abandonment of the academic job market, a response to failure, or a curse: instead, it should be understood as a new avenue for intellectual work, one that neither graduate-school programs nor the Modern Language Association would be wise to ignore. (RS)

Provides a detailed look at Finland's efforts at internationalizing education. This article is based on interview-based research project at the University of Turku, Finland.(Author/VWL)

Describes personal and departmental circumstances within the author's English department, in which he found it impossible to move forward on the issue of wider career counseling for English PhDs. Describes how a career management series organized by professionals outside the department offered help in rethinking the meaningful uses to which a…

Spotlights one site where the new curriculum calls the English department at Louisiana State University toward further change: the juncture between the undergraduate and graduate curricula. Illustrates the benefits of adopting a document that articulates curricular goals. Describes a five-year curriculum revision process. Attaches excerpts from a…

Offers some perspectives drawn from a recent experience in making a transition from faculty to dean in the hope it will be of some help to other chairs considering crossing the "great divide." Discusses the decision, the preparation, the application, the search itself, the "rules of the road," and the results. (SG)

Suggests that the valorization of Emerson in English departments has been behind the split between fiction and nonfiction, and between creative writing and composition. Suggests further that the values Emerson places on contemplation versus action degrade argument and persuasion. (TB)

Self-perceived leadership styles of nursing department chairpersons (n=106) were correlated with their scholarly productivity. A majority viewed themselves as having a "participating" leadership style with most of the remaining having a "selling" style. A majority felt pressure to engage in scholarly activities. (JOW)

Offers a utopian vision of what the place of rhetoric should be in a department that thinks of itself as literary. Argues that a Ph.D. in English that encompasses both literature and rhetoric works because it is really a degree in rhetoric. (TB)

Argues that English departments may have to eschew parochialism and in the very same move find a shared purpose not by looking to a national disciplinary mission or identity but rather by developing a very pragmatic, opportunistic sense of what a given set of faculty members in a given set of circumstances can accomplish in its local situation.…

Discusses how the University of Chicago is one of the institutions clinging most tenaciously to the monastic ideal, and the new administration's "focus on budgets and bottom lines was a sign of unwelcome worldiness." Suggests that more leadership from humanists is needed. (SG)

Shares some things about the author's career in the English profession, in a confessional mode. Notes that as a profession in a highly competitive and commodified society, educators encourage "hypocriticism"--intellectual bluff and bluster, self-promotion and one-upmanship. Recounts some episodes from an academic life of "lazy idle little…