Academic Departments Books

It has been said there are three approaches to dealing with mistakes: Dumb people make mistakes and do not learn from their mistakes; smart people learn from their mistakes, and really smart people learn from the mistakes of others.

Dr. Deryl Leaming provides that third approach in a way. This is not to say he made mistakes in his many years as a college administrator, but his excellent book does provide the reader the opportunity to learn from his significant experience.

He has been there, done that, so to speak, when it comes to leadership in heading a program.

His latest work deals with all the key aspects of being a university department chairperson -- legal issues, faculty matters from hiring effective faculty to dealing with faculty problems, and student matters.

Through the tips in his book he provides experience-based advice that can be of significant benefit to the new or even veteran department head.
He has been a university professor, department chairperson, director of a school of journalism and dean of liberal arts. The reader of this second edition of his academic leadership book can learn from his experience to avoid mistakes in leading a department.

He covers a great deal of advice on procedures, including a number of forms that will be useful.

This second edition is a good read and provides practical advice, particularly for the new department chairperson.

REVIEWER: Ralph J. Turner, Ph.D., professor emeritus, Marshall University
lph J. Turner, Ph.D., professor emeritus, Marshall University

This second edition of Academic Leadership: A Practical Guide to Chairing the Department is an extraordinarily comprehensive treatment of ways to address the variety of challenges facing department chairpersons in institutions from all types and sectors of higher education. The author, Deryl Leaming, provides an inviting and accessible style of writing that joins abundant references from relevant authorities with occasional episodes from his personal experience of several decades as chair and dean at some four different institutions. The result is a preeminently practical primer that will give new department chairs a valuable roadmap to success in a notoriously difficult position. It is excellent reading for those contemplating serving as a department chairperson or other academic leader. The volume is so comprehensive that even experienced chairpersons will find the book to provide a helpful review of ways to meet their responsibilities and challenges.

This new volume is almost twice as long as its predecessor, offering an expanded treatment of issues raised in the first edition and reflecting more emphasis upon the complexities of today's financial realities. Major sections deal with common concerns about leadership, handling matters of department vision and management, addressing legal issues, contending with a large variety of faculty and student matters, as well as attending to one's own career. The 30 chapters are compact and quite accessible. All are useful and contain lists of web and print resources. I particularly appreciated the units on sexual harassment and the implications of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as the one on dealing with chronic low achievers. Some 17 appendices provide helpful examples of different policy guidelines and methods of communication.

Anker Publishing has a large variety of often-expensive volumes for academic leaders. Some overlap and others lack originality or comprehensiveness. By contrast, this is a stand-out value that will set a standard for some time to come.

Dr. Leaming is truely a gifted writer and instructor. He has given more to his students than some are capable of comprehending. The books he has written and his experiences throughout his life make him a special gift to all who read his work or get to know him. He is an extremely precious gift to his students. He goes out of his way to encourage and teach his students. He makes sure his students are preparing for life within their current level,but more importantly,for their future endeavors. A gifted person who only wants to share what he knows in the hopes of helping others.

I wish the dean had given me this book a year ago. It would have made my life much easier. The book is easy to read and has solid ideas on how to be a more effective chairperson.

If only I could get some of the administrators of my university to read the book!

I am not only new to academic leadership, but I am new to this country. Deryl Leaming's book has served as an enlightening guide for me, and has helped me earn the assistance and respect of my faculty. This book is among the best investments I have made in my academic career. Thank you.

6/26/01

Dear Dr. Toh-Ming Lu:

I believe that I have learned a good deal from "Turmoil and Opportunities in Higher Education." The emotional intelligence that you demonstrated in this book was heartfelt. I was struck by the story of when your uncle asked you to write a letter. The observation you made: that curriculum changes as society changes, was excellent. Since your uncle's grade school education focused on reading and writing, and yours included many more disciplines, it was not fair of him to judge your education based upon his own.

Changing times and technology will offer new teaching methods, but I am amazed by the studio programs you have implemented. The change from big lecture halls to interactive classrooms is dramatic, and I find myself wondering how it would be to learn general physics in the studio setting. Surely the change would result in increased interaction between student and teacher, opportunity to learn from one's peers, a more concrete understanding of basic concepts for the student, and more stimuli to keep the student awake.

Many of the changes and suggestions you have made to the administration would be beneficial to students. In particular, the streamlining of registration and the push for a more customer-friendly service at many offices would prevent a lot of hassles. I can think of countless times when I was passed from office to office at my college to straighten out a financial aid or work-study issue. It is disheartening when someone is absent from his or her office and you are not able to resolve an issue until the next day. Asking office staff to cross-train one another helps to prevent occurrences such as these.

I am impressed by your fairness with teacher evaluations. My college experience has been blessed with wonderful teachers and I have never had to write a negative comment on a teacher evaluation. However, it is important to the students that faculty members are willing to change teaching styles to become more effective. Your implementation of financial motivation (0.5% leverage) of faculty is great.

Your solution to small enrollment classes was an excellent application of technology. Using distance learning and splitting the responsibility of lecture up between several institutions would prove to be very efficient. It is wonderful that you saved the small enrollment classes by decreasing the load on our faculty. I agree with your emphasis on creation of knowledge rather than absorption of knowledge at the graduate level. However, I find that the more I learn, the more creative I can be.

Sincerely, Damian Huising

This book is charming, informative, and inspiring. It is the story of a person who became chair of a Department of Physics, and had the vision and courage to change it in a very fundamental way. I read this book at the beginning of a similar appointment myself, and took great inspiration from it. The author, Professor Lu, accomplished some amazing feats in his administrative role. Furthermore, the book is quite enjoyable to read, mainly because the personality of the author shines through so clearly. One forms the clear picture of a person who is smart, optimistic, honest, and has a great sense of humor. Professor Lu is not afraid to 'think outside the lines.' I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in progress in higher education, especially in developments taking place at the intersection between science and education.

This book is charming, informative, and inspiring. It is the story of a person who became chair of a Department of Physics, and had the vision and courage to change it in a very fundamental way. I read this book at the beginning of a similar appointment myself, and took great inspiration from it. The author, Professor Lu, accomplished some amazing feats in his administrative role. Furthermore, the book is quite enjoyable to read, mainly because the personality of the author shines through so clearly. One forms the clear picture of a person who is smart, optimistic, honest, and has a great sense of humor. Professor Lu is not afraid to 'think outside the lines.' I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in progress in higher education, especially in developments taking place at the intersection between science and education.

Toh Ming Lu clearly discusses the difficult and challenging circumstances under which he became the head of the Physics Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He then explains his unusual approach for solving the problems that the department was facing. His lessons, based on common sense and shrewd observation of the similarities and differences between academia and the business world and how you can motivate the faculty, staff and students to work harder and work together, are truly worth learning. He succeeded in moving the department to a much higher level, where few could have even managed to keep it from disintegrating. His approach is quite universal and based on a few basic principles that I belive can be applied to many situations. Therefore, I recommend this book not only to academics, but also to many businessmen facing tough problems as they move into the new century.

A compelling story of a top scientist who was arm-twisted into academic administration. He tells how his view of academia was transformed and led him to transform his department. After an awesome run as department chair he proved his sanity by returning to the faculty ranks to concentrate on his first love - teaching and research in physics. An outstanding description of the challenges and opportunities of higher education at the dawn of the new century.

This is a valuable guide for new chairs of the departments. It is a practical guide. It must be on the desk of every new chairman of the department

Great transaction. I highly recommend this text for anyone who is in a leadership position (or wants to be) in academia.

Though I have not read this book, I would imagine it to be interesting and of high quality. The author is currently a dean at the school that I attend, and is a fantastic rolemodel for any current or aspiring dean, or any other member of a college's administration.

I really was very close to an emotional mental/physical breakdown at some points during my dissertation & this book let me know that no matter how alone I felt, I was not alone. Other people actually DID know what I was going through. Good use of humor too. Read BEFORE you embark on this last step, it will help to prepare you. Remember the "P" in PhD is for perseverance.

"Getting What You Came For" is a good common-sense guide for the majority of students who are considering grad school, and some of the advice and guidance that Peters imparts is particularly valuable. That said, there's a lot that is out of date here, especially as applies to technology and the application process, which is now woefully out of date. It's utility to non-traditional older students, students seeking to attend only part-time, or those who cannot just pick up and move to wherever to attend grad school is far more limited. Since I fall into those three categories myself this book was of almost no use to me; it simply repeated things I had heard or read elsewhere. Worse still there's little discussion of things like accelerated PhD's (bypassing Masters), nothing on creating/updating CVs or resumes. The book is overall geared more towards getting into grad school rather than the problems and issues you can and will encounter once there. While reading it I found myself repeatedly flipping forward through sections that didn't apply to me, which is not the hallmark of a useful resource. There have to be other more useful books on the subject than this!

In the humanities, completing a PhD can take as long as 10 years. Reducing that time as much as possible is crucial for a graduate student. This book addresses many of the practical issues related to completing your graduate degree, from applying to grad schools to choosing a dissertation topic to find a job afterward. While different disciplines vary greatly in their requirements and expectations, this guide will be very useful to anyone considering graduate school or currently enrolled.

I am in the middle of my reading. But everything looks like what I needed to hear. If you are looking for doing a master or a Ph.D. sure it will result very helpful. If you're close to start with your graduate studies... even better!!

Everything is O.K. with the book, but it would be better if R.L. Peters makes different versions for Masters and Ph.D.'s.

I have to agree with other reviewers who say this books needs to be updated. I am a working adult who has gone back to college to finish a degree as a part-time student. I am considering graduate school, but there is no way I can quit work and become a full-time student. The book is aimed at "traditional" students who generally finish their undergraduate training before they're 30 years old, and who aren't stuck in a mortgage situation yet. The book is aimed at very young adults, telling them that graduate school is going to be tougher than undergraduate school, where "you could get away with almost anything short of burning down the administration building."

Despite this, I found the book useful as an overview for some of the differences between master's and Ph.D. programs, and some insight into finding good advisors or faculty. But I would like to see a new edition that includes online schools and schools with limited residency. I'd also like some material aimed at adult learners who must hold down a job while they study, and some of the pros and cons of online versus face-to-face graduate programs.

I bought this book when I was preparing to apply for Ph.D programs in the social sciences. It is a good source, and is actually the most detailed account of graduate school I ever received, including things that my professors said to me. This book details graduate school from beginning to end, starting with the admissions process and ending with the job search. It's rightfully thick and will be quickly devoured by anyone who's really, really interested in getting a Ph.D. It's a good read, too, not boring or stuffy.

I only have a few complaints with the book: one, it's outdated. I believe it was published in 1992 and it really showed how much the world has changed in 15 years. The admissions chapter talks about organizing paper application documents; one of the chapters on research speaks of buying a huge file cabinet and organizing hard copies of journal articles into this cabinet; another chapter on organization explains what a personal information manager is and speaks about older, outdated models or versions of that kind of software. I'd say for that chapter, you'll definitely need to supplement by asking current grad students and new/young professors about the methods they use(d) to keep themselves organized in grad school (a lot of grad students use Zotero, a free Firefox add-on, or EndNote [which is expensive; check to see if your school gives it out] to organize their materials. There are a lot of free, open-source ones on the 'net).

Second, a lot of the information is peculiar to the natural/"hard" sciences. Peters admits that to himself, noting that his book will be most relevant to those in the natural sciences, next the social sciences, and finally least relevant to those in the arts and humanities. For example, Peters advises avoiding teaching responsibilities at all costs to try to facilitate getting through graduate school faster, whereas in the humanities and some social sciences this is equivalent to career suicide, particularly if one wants to go into academia/university teaching. Many of my humanities colleagues have cited that the book is worthless or of little value to them and recommend "Graduate Study for the 21st Century" instead.

I think if read with common sense and the realization that the book is now 16 years old and written from the perspective of a science Ph.D holder, it contains good advice and a realistic description of graduate school life, including highlighting things that students would never think about (such as Peters' retelling of how some professors/advisers defrauded their students by stealing their work and passing it off as their own, or how some students who ingratiated themselves with the department secretary fortuitously earned fellowships when their late or disfavored applications mysteriously rose to the top of the pack).

Tucker offers a variety of advice to the newly appointed chair of a university department. On subjects like recruiting promising new researchers and lecturers. Or retaining the interest of students, so that they will take a wide range of courses offered by the department. And hopefully some will declare majoring in the department's field.

Awkward subjects like evaluating the performance of lecturers is also covered. Including when they are coming up for tenure review. Here, the need for criteria that are as objective as possible is vital, to avoid various types of discrimination. Or charges thereof.

Sure, the book was published well over 10 years ago. But none of its remarks are outdated.

How to evaluate and improve a university department? That has been a perennial and contentious topic in many universities. Wergin weighs in with several observations and suggestions.

The basic idea for moving forward is simple. The faculty should be closely involved in defining and promoting a department's mission and focus. This takes advantage of a desire amongst many academics for a sense of community and purpose within their department. The biggest problem is simply that, once tenured, individuals are largely autonomous. Plus, in order to get tenure, researchers often have to be very competitive within their fields. Wergin offers ways to counteract these tendencies. Appealing in part to that sense of community. Along with the notion that faculty working together often have greater political clout within a university.

Waltzer's writing is riveting and transports the reader into the "Big Chair" as a department head. Practical, hard-hitting advice is masterfully woven with whimsical anecdotes to make this book a captivating piece literature. As an active educator, I believe Waltzer's book to potentially be the best prose to come out of Miami University in the last 8 years. The easy to read format and writing style allows the reader to quickly reference such topics as: the ethical use of alcohol for faculty recruiting; pipe selection to get noticed by graduate students; official opinions on mascot changes; and selecting the right khaki pants for casual summer classes. As a briefcase bible, or a nightstand slumber-aide, this book is a must for any academic who is gunning for Department Chair.