Department head life cycle
Department head life cycle
The head of the scientific department is considered one of the most important academic staff in any college, due to the fact that he is assigned or supervising the academic department within his specialization, which is the main academic unit of the educational institution. Despite the importance of this position, we often find that whoever holds this academic position lacks sufficient administrative experience, and it did not occur to him when he was appointed as a faculty member that he might head the academic department in which he works.
This article discusses some issues related to ways to advance the profession of department head, in particular how colleges can contribute with the help of professors to prepare themselves for this difficult position, and what are the areas that they can do in order to support department heads so that they serve their academic departments and educational institutions. It also discusses the issue of: How can department heads continue to develop their administrative skills while exercising this leadership role?, and how can they prepare themselves for academic life after completing their tenure as heads of academic departments?
The importance of this article lies in providing assistance and assistance to different types of administrative academics in order to assist them in performing their job role. And preparing it to be a reference for those who head the departments to succeed him, and to perform this academic administrative role successfully, and ways to develop their skills as leaders for this important administrative position. This article presents a comprehensive view of department heads from several aspects, so that senior administrative officials can sense the importance of this leadership position and realize its responsibilities, especially facing problems and providing opportunities to develop themselves and their managerial skills. This article aims to answer the following questions:-
? Who will be the head of the academic department?
? Why do some professors continue to express their desire to assume the position of head of the academic department?
? What are the stages that the head of the academic department goes through?
Each of (Hecht, Higgerson, Gmelch, and Tucker, 2019) mentioned four points that we often see facing colleges when choosing a department head:-
? Selection is made based on the academic degrees of the faculty members.
? Not preparing them adequately for this work, which we can consider as a fundamental shift in their professional role.
? They are most concerned with the bonuses and financial benefits they receive.
? They head the department for a relatively short period, and most of them serve for a period not exceeding two to four years.
It is usual at the beginning of any discussion about the role of the academic department heads to revolve around the fact that 80% of the administrative decisions in universities and colleges are taken by the heads of academic departments based on scientific matters. This statistic is what Woodburne 2019 mentioned: that department heads actually play a major role in managing the affairs of higher education institutions.
The leadership of academic departments requires multiple leadership capabilities, foremost among which are communication skills, the ability to solve and deal with problems, conflict resolution skill, the skill of managing variation or what can be called cultural management skills that work to achieve balance and convergence between dissimilar customs and traditions, training skills, and skills Adapting While carrying out this heavy work, with the required acquisition of these previous skills, department heads often have their own research interests and projects.
Who are the heads of scientific departments?
We often find that those who head the departments are the faculty members who have spent a period of time from their academic work. Their motive in accepting this is either because of a sense of duty, or a desire to raise the level of the department, and help in its development, and it is customary for them to be assigned for a period of two to four years, and then they return to their normal position as faculty members at the end of their assignment period. Many of them view this position as stressful, and negatively affects their basic mission of being researchers, as there are many factors that affect the extent of the department head’s continuity in his management of the department, or his return to performing his duties as a faculty member in the academic department, or His assumption of higher administrative positions, and on top of these factors, his personality, his scientific identity, the mechanism of his assignment, and the procedures that made him assume the presidency of the department, the nature of his specialization, and the type of preparation for this task. The heads of academic departments have an important university role as they are members of committees at the university level, in addition to leadership roles entrusted to them internally at the university or external roles with specialized groups within the scientific field, as they are considered the first line of the department as they appear to have leadership roles at the level of the community surrounding the university
Professional identity:
There is no doubt that the way the department heads view themselves affects the way they manage the department, and what they will do after completing their term as department chair. Studies (Hecht, Higgerson, Gmelch, and Tucker 2019) indicate that more than 40% of those who head scientific departments try to be independent of their administrative personalities as heads of departments from their academic personalities as faculty members, because they do not consider themselves administrators in the first place. These studies indicate that less than 5% consider what they do as absolute administrative work. More than half of the department heads believe that they perform roles and jobs that are a mixture of academic and administrative work at the same time. Departments As indicated by the study (Kroll, 2021), the percentage (70%) of department heads who cling to their academic identity return to reincarnation as a faculty member immediately after the end of their tenure as department heads. An interesting result (Kroll, 2021) mentioned is that the number of department heads who perceive that they run their departments business efficiently and classify themselves as faculty and administrators at the same time is much more than those who perceive that they are less efficient in their head