Department Chairs

This page will feature resources for department leaders and members to understand key factors to a positive, warm, inclusive department climate;  how to talk about climate; and how to take actionable steps to sustain positive workplace environments. 

The Lehigh ADVANCE surveys, and numerous external studies, have demonstrated that one of the biggest factors linked with faculty retention and job satisfaction is the climate in the academic department. This held true even for interdiscilpinary scholars.  Department chairs have the unique position to manage and establish department norms and practices which support all of its members. 

Lehigh Department Chairs 2021-2022-List

Fall 2021 Chair Orientation

• Chairs Orientation Slides- 2021 
• Lehigh Faculty on What they wished their department chairs to know Climate surveys, Kardia Evaluation of ADVANCE, and personal anecdotes help department chairs understand the experiences of people with historically underrepresented identities and find ways to build postiive cultures.

COVID-19 Related Information for Chairs: Understand impact on faculty careers, includes calls to action, data, and recommendations

• Supporting Faculty During & After COVID-19: Don’t let go of equity, Gonzales, L.D., & Griffin, K.A. Aspire Alliance (2020)
• Documenting COVID- tips for evaluators and candidates- UMASS ADVANCE
• In the wake of COVID-19, academia needs new solutions to ensure gender equity, PNAS Malisch et al. 2020
• IHE Update 8/20: Something's Got to Give: Women's journal submission rates fell as their caring responsibilities jumped due to COVID-19
• A Call to Action: Supporting Women Faculty in the Time of COVID-19, Medium
• The pandemic is hitting scientist parents hard and some soultions may backfire, Science
• Women in Science May Suffer Lasting Career Damage from COVID-19, Scientific American 
• IHE: STEM Equity and Inclusion (Un)Interrupted? The pandemic will negatively impact the careers of women in STEM, particularly those of color, and failure to respond could jeopardize years of progress toward faculty equity, argue Stephanie A. Goodwin and Beth Mitchneck
• Don't forget: staff, students, and administrators are also experiencing the pandemic
  • The Impact of COVID-19 on Academic Department Chairs: Heightened Complexity, Accentuated Liminality, and Competing Perceptions of Reinvention, 2021
  • The Impact of COVID-19 on Student Experiences and Expectations: Evidence from a Survey
  • Non-Faculty Educators, COVID-19 and the faculty-staff divide 

Leading with Inclusion in Mind

• The Department Chair as Transformative Diversity Leader, by Edna Chun and Avin Evans. This is a good reference for understanding the capacity of the department chair to be a leader of diversity, equity and inclusion. A copy of this book is in the ADVANCE Center Library. 
• Inclusive Department Best Practices- UMASS ADVANCE
• Enhancing Department Climate: A Guide for Department Chairs- University of Wisconsin, WISELI
• Equity Minded Faculty Workloads

• Faculty Service Equity and Transparency: In November 2018, Lehigh convened a summit exploring strategies to value and make transparent the contributions to service and engagement.  Research and thought pieces relevant to creating equitable workloads (often the responsibility of the chair) include:
  • Why we need a national conversation on the value of faculty service (opinion, Farrell & Flowers)
  • Academe needs to better evaluate engaged scholarship (opinion, O'Meara)
  • How to make faculty service demands more equitable (opinion, O'Meara)
  • Understanding Measures of Faculty Impact and the Role of Engineering Societies (National Academy of Engineering)
  • Social Science Research on Faculty Workload, Gender and Race (compiled by Dr. KerryAnn O'Meara)
  • **NEW ITEM** Faculty Work Activity Dashboards: A Strategy to Increase Transparency (KerryAnn O’Meara , Elizabeth Beise , Dawn Culpepper , Joya Misra & Audrey Jaeger. Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 52:3, 34-42, 2020)
  • Engaging Everyone in the Life of the Department-a matrix to support inclusion and transparency, The UW–Madison Office for Strategic Consulting developed a matrix that department chairs can use or customize when assigning departmental members to committees and roles in order to ensure that opportunities are well-distributed.
  • Instructors Spend ‘Emotional Labor’ in Diversity Courses, and Deserve Credit for It (The Chronicle, November 15, 2018)
  • The Impact of Faculty Work-Life Factors on Faculty Service Morale (Sheets, Barnhardt, Phillips, Valdes, 2018)
  • Undoing disparities in faculty workloads: A randomized trial experiment (O’Meara, Jaeger, Misra, Lennartz, Kuvaeva, 2018)
  • Secret service: Revealing gender biases in the visibility and value of faculty service.Hanasono, Lisa K.; Broido, Ellen M.; Yacobucci, Margaret M.; Root, Karen V.; Peña, Susana; & O'Neil, Deborah A. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, Vol 12(1), Mar 2019, 85-98 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000081

CASE Studies from CCAS