DEPARTMENT CHAIRPERSONS: INFORMATION.
STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS AND THE USE
OF PRESENTLY AVAILABLE AND POTENTIALLY
AVAILABLE FACULTY DATA

Dissertation for the Degree of Ph. D.
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
JEROME F. E. HALVERSON
1977

 

   
     

  

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Michigan 5 mo
University

This is to certify that the

thesis-entitled

DEPARTMENT CHAIRPERSONS: INFORMATION STORAGE

AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS AND THE USE OF
PRESENTLY AVAILABLE AND POTENTIALLY
AVAILABLE FACULTY DATA

«presented by

Jerome F. E. Halverson

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph.D. degree in Department of Adminis-
tration and Higher
Education

Major professor

 

 

0-7639

DEPARTMENT CHAIRPERSONS: INFORMATION STORAGE
AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS AND THE USE OF
PRESENTLY AVAILABLE AND POTENTIALLY

AVAILABLE FACULTY DATA

By

Jerome F. E. Halverson

AN ABSTRACT OF A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Administration
and Higher Education

1977

ABSTRACT
DEPARTMENT CHAIRPERSONS: INFORMATION STORAGE
AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS AND THE USE OF

PRESENTLY AVAILABLE AND POTENTIALLY
AVAILABLE FACULTY DATA

By

Jerome F. E. Halverson

The use of departmental faculty data and its storage system
by department chairpersons at Michigan State University is the subject
of this descriptive study. It traces the historical development of
departments and department chairpersons as their role becomes more
sophisticated and complex.

The major purpose of this study was to respond to the need for
research in the area of faculty data and decision making by the
chairperson.

Specifically, this study was to identify present and preferred
faculty data.storage systems; the frequency and discrepancy of the
use made of faculty data in present and preferred systems relative to
four decision areas; and the relationship between size of department
and the system used to store the data.

The literaturerevealad: (a) a need to reevaluate the purpose
of departments and the role and responsibilities of Chairpersons; (b)
that the growing complexity of the position precludes a universally

applicable definition of chairperson; (c) the need to define role

Jerome F. E. Halverson

behavior and limits of chairperson's authority; (d) the need to reward
the position in order to attract and retain skillful managers and
academic leaders; and (e) a sizeable literature related to computers
used in higher education but an apparent void in the literature related
to computers and departmental management except for publications by the
National Center for Higher Education‘Management Systems.

The population studied was department chairpersons at Michigan
State University during the 1975-76 academic year. Questionnaires were
hand delivered to 89 chairpersons, of which 47 (52.8 percent) were
returned and useable. Simple totals, averages, mean and standard
deviation were used to analyze the data.

The analyzed data revealed that: the folder was the most
commonly used present storage system for faculty data; there were no
faculty data items always used across all four decisions of salary,
promotion, tenure and selection of new faculty decisions; a management
information system was the preferred (desired) faculty data storage
system; if a preferred system were in place, not one of the faculty
data items would always be used for all four decisions; the discrepancy
scores between the use of faculty data items relative to the present
and preferred storage systems were judged to be without statistical
relevance; and there was no substantial difference between small,
medium and large departments and their present use of storage systems.
However, with a preferred storage system in place, medium sized depart-

ments indicated a two to one preference for a management information

Jerome F. E. Halverson

system, while small and large departments maintained a diminishing
preference for the folder.

It can be concluded that: (1) while the most commonly used
faculty data storage system was the folder, a respectable number of
chairpersons indicated a clear preference for a management information
system; (2) The use of faculty data appeared to be unrelated to the
storage systen from which it was retrieved as attested to by the low
discrepancy scores between the use of present and preferred storage
systems; (3) Department size appeared to be of some importance since
medium.sized departments in a preferred storage system overwhelmingly
chose a management information system and the small and large department
chairpersons indicated a declining preference for the folder.

Finally, suggestions were made for further research which
included replicating this study at other colleges and universities as
well as providing interested chairpersons at Michigan State University
with the tools to begin the installation of a management information

system.

DEPARTMENT CHAIRPERSONS: INFORMATION STORAGE
AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS AND THE USE OF
PRESENTLY AVAILABLE AND POTENTIALLY

AVAILABLE FACULTY DATA

By

Jerome F. E. Halverson

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of Administration
and Higher Education

1977

G I C27 C’ {GIST

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dr. William.Sweetland was my chairman until his untimely death
in July, 1976. To him I am grateful for the time and attention he gave
to my candidacy and to me personally.

Dr. Richard Featherstone graciously agreed to assume chairman-
ship of my committee in addition to his many other responsibilities and
accommodated my professional needs with interest, kindness, insight and
patience. It was his interest and work on departmental chairpersons
which led to this study. I salute him as a professional and as a kind
human being.

To Dr. Howard Hickey I owe much. He suggested while teaching
overseas at the Colegio Americana, Monterrey, N.L., Mexico, that I
apply for admission in the doctoral program and after being accepted,
was instrumental in providing employment. He has spent many hours pro-
fessionally and personally offering guidance, insight and encouragement.
His 'why not' attitude distinguishes him as an educator and most
assuredly as a good man. Mil gracias, por todo, amigo!

Dr. James McKee, as committeeman and professor, put not only
the topic of this study in perspective but also the larger issue of
higher education. Dr. McKee was generous with his time and made

accommodations even when it was inconvenient.

ii

Dr. John Useem, professor of sociology and anthropology,
shared with his students a macro-sociological view of the world.
He is a scholar whose example I hope long to remember. Thank you
very much.

My friends, neighbors and former colleagues in the Mott
Institute, especially Omar Alsoubani, Trish and Felix Vickers, and
Bill and Jean Hoffman have all been involved with this project at
one time or another. To each of them, a special thanks.

With the assistance and patience of Judith Taylor, my research
consultant, program design and analysis were simplified. Thank you.

One person in particular has devoted a lion's share of time
and energy to this project. Not only has she typed most of the drafts
and innumerable revisions, but she has been patient and steadfast during
the ups and downs of the past two years. Thank you, Linda Carey, for
your part in this, but thank you mostly for making my life happier.

Finally, I am.grateful to my mother and dad, who hold their
Ph.D's. in the art of living, for their love, support and sense of

humor. Thanks, Mom and Dad.

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LI 3 T 0F TflLE S C O C O O O O O O C O O 0

LIST OF FIGURES . . . . . . . . . . . .

Chapter

I.

II.

III.

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . .

Background of the Problem .
Statement of Purpose . . . . .
Research Questions . . . .
Definition of Terms . . . .
Instrumentation . . . . . . .
Assumptions of the Study . . .
Delimitations . . . . . . . .
Summary . . . . . . . .

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE .

The Department and Department Chairpersons . . .

Overview . . . . . . . . .

Duties and Responsibilities

Authority . . . . . . . .
Power . . . . . . . . . .
Influence . . . . . . . .
Preparation and Selection
Role of the Faculty . . .
Activities . . . . . . . .
Style . . . . . . . . . .
Role Conflict . . . . . .
Attraction of the Position
For the Future . . . . . .
Summary . . . . . . . . .
Management Information Systems
Summary . . . . . . . . .

DESIGN OF THE STUDY . . . . .
Population .

Sampling Design . . . . . . .
Instrumentation .

iv

in

Higher

Education .

Page
vii

viii

ll
12
13
13
14
14
15

l6

l7
17
24
33
35
37
38
41
47
48
49
SO
51
56
57
69

70
7O

7O
7O

Chapter

IV.

V.

Data Collection Procedures . . . . . . . . . . .
Survey Procedures . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Treatment of Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Processing the Data . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Statement of Research Questions . . . . . . . . .

Analysis of the Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ANMIYSIS OF m DATA 0 O O O O O C O O O O C O O O 0

Present and Potential (Desired) Storage System . .
Present Storage Systems . . . . . . . . . . .
Potential Storage Systems . . . . . . . . . .

Presently Available Faculty Data and Its

Frequency of Use . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Potentially Available Faculty Data and Its

Estimated Frequency of Use . . . . . . . . . . .
Discrepancy Scores Between the Use of Presently
Available Faculty Data and Potentially Available
Faculty Data Relative to Storage Systems . . . .
Department Size Relative to Present and Potential
(Desired) Storage Systems . . . . . . . . . . .
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS . . . . . .

Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Purpose of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Review of the Literature . . . . . . . . . . .
Design of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Findings of the Study . . . . . . . . . . . .

Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Implications for Departmental Chairpersons . . . .

Implications for Further Research . . . . . . . .

Appendix

A.

UNPUBLISHED MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT
CHAIRPERSON JOB DESCRIPTION . . . . . . . . . . .

HARRISBURG (PA) AREA COMMUNITY COLLEGE DEPARTMENT
CHAIRPERSON JOB DESCRIPTION . . . . . . . . . . .

REASONS FOR DEPARTMENT CHAIRPERSON RESIGNATION . .

NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS SPECIALIZING IN THE USE OF
COMPUTERS IN HIGHER EDUCATION . . . . . . . . . .

Page

71
71
72
73
73
74
74

75
75
77
80
85

87

89

91
96

97

97
97
99
103
103
105
105
109

111

114

119

121

Appendix

E.

F.

AVAILABLE FACULTY DATA . .

AVAILABLE FACULTY DATA . .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

vi

COVER LETTER AND QUESTIONNAIRE:
CHAIRPERSONS AND THE USE OF PRESENTLY AND
POTENTIALLY AVAILABLE FACULTY DATA

DEPARTMENT ‘

FEATHERSTONE'S SUGGESTED PROCEDURE FOR DMS
DEVELOPMENT AND POSSIBLE DMS CONCEPT

MEAN AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FOR PRESENTLY

MEAN AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FOR POTENTIALLY

THE USE OF PRESENT AND POTENTIAL STORAGE SYSTEMS
ACROSS 17 FACULTY DATA ITEMS RELATED TO
DEPARTMENT SIZE

Page

122

128

133

136

139

143

10.

LIST OF TABLES

Number and Percentage of Response . . . . . . . . . .
Number and Reason for Unuseable and Non-Responses .

Presently and Potentially Used (Desired) Storage
Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Comparison Between Present Storage System and
Potential (Desired) Storage Systen . . . . . . . .

Faculty Data Word Item Equivalencies Substituted
for Mean for Presently Available Faculty
Data and Its Frequency of Use . . . . . . . . . . . .

Faculty Data Word Item Equivalencies Substituted for
Mean for Potentially Available Faculty Data and Its
Estimated Frequency of Use . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Discrepancy Scores Between the Use of Presently
Available Faculty Data and Potentially Available
Faculty Data 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0

Comparative Use of Faculty Data Items for Each of
the Four DeCiSions O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0

Comparison of Department Size to the Use of Present
and Potential (Desired) Storage Systems . . . . . . .

Department Size and Presently Available and
Potentially Available Storage and Retrieval Systems .

vii

Page
72

73

76

84

86

88

90

92

94

139

LIST OF FIGURES

Page
Forces that request or demand information and data
from the department chairman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Two views of hierarchical roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

The department management system . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

Means and standard deviations for presently available
faculty data and its frequency of use . . . . . . . . . . 133

Means and standard deviations for potentially

available faculty data and its estimated
frequency of use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

viii

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

In the past two decades, challenging managerial developments
have found their way to institutions of higher education. Among some
of the more consequential of these are decentralization and various
other forms of participatory management. Operationally this means
that more time, more people, more committees and more information are
required to make departmental decisions. The department chairperson,
as a middle manager in this constantly downward shifting of decision-
making roles, is expected to exercise not only academic leadership but
political and economic leadership as well. Dressel et a1. enumerate
some of the responsibilities of a chairperson in their study.

Tradition and faculty demand require the chairman to be a
scholar, but the demands placed upon the chairman include
many functions: Chairmen, initiate action on budget for-
mulation, selection, promotion, and retention of academic
staff; faculty salaries; sabbatical leaves; interdepartmental
relationships; research grants; educational development and
innovation; university committee membership; discipline rep-
resentation; professional growth; advice to dean on depart-
mental matters; administration to faculty relationship; new
faculty orientation; departmental meetings; adequate non-
academic help; student administration; student advising;
class scheduling; student personnel records; faculty load;
graduate student application approval; grading standards

and practices; and curriculum changes. Also, they have
knowledge of the administrative routine of the college;

institutional legislative organization; government grants
procedures; policies relating to graduate students; and
scholarly productivity of department faculty.1

A.more detailed account of the chairperson's function is found in a
Pennsylvania State University faculty handbook; while the description
is long, it does demonstrate a point.

A. Administrative

1. To organize the department and serve as the chief
administrative officer responsible for programs of
resident education, research, and continuing education.

2. To assume the initiative in developing departmental
policies, coordinating them with those of the College
and University.

3. To administer the departmental budget.

4. To organize, develop, and supervise programs of
continuing education in the academic fields
represented in his department.

5. To supervise the department's secretarial and
service staff.

6. To take the initiative in establishing an
approved list of textbooks for classroom use
and to recommend their adoption to the Dean.

7. To prepare schedules of course offerings and teaching
assignments and, in the process, maintain liaison with
other academic department heads of the College,
Officers of the Graduate School, and other officers
of the University.

8. To administer, under present University policy, the
departmental programs of instruction and research at
the Commonwealth Campuses and Centers.

9. To supervise and manage the physical facilities under
the jurisdiction of the department.

 

1Paul L. Dressel, F. Craig Johnson and Philip M. Marcus,
The Confidence Crisis, An Analysis of University Departments
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc., Publishers, 1971), p. 13.

B.

Faculty

1. To recruit a capable faculty, with the concurrence of
the appropriate administrative officers.

2. To encourage excellence in teaching and to develop and
administer department programs of teacher improvement.

3. To make recommendations to the dean relative to
promotions, salary adjustments, tenure, and leaves
of absence for department members.

4. To serve as a channel of communication between the
faculty and the administrative or executive committee,
dean, and general University officers.

5. To nominate to the dean section heads for the major
areas within a department.

6. To recommend department members for membership on the
faculty of the Graduate School.

7. To encourage research, writing and other creative
endeavor on the part of department members.

8. To organize and supervise the operation of appropriate
faculty seminars and Convocations.

9. To recommend and approve staff members for continuing
education assignments.

10. To recommend and approve staff members for the
Commonwealth Campuses and Centers.

Students

1. To set up appropriate arrangements for advising
undergraduate students majoring in the department.

2. To set up appropriate arrangements for the supervision

and approval of graduate theses and dissertations, and
for the advising and guidance of graduate students
within the department.

D. Promotion and Liaison
1. To cooperate with and assist:

a. the Associate or Assistant Dean for Research in
stimulating research and writing on the part of
department members;

b. the Associate or Assistant Dean for Continuing
Education in formulating and staffing programs; and

c. the Associate or Assistant Dean for Resident
Education in evaluating and promoting the further
development of the undergraduate and graduate
programs of instruction.

2. To develop and maintain contacts with:

a. research organizations and foundations, both on and
off campus; and

b. business, labor, professional, and public groups.
3. To serve as liaison between the department and other
academic departments of the College and University
and with the Graduate School.
E. Committees

1. To serve as a member of the administrative or executive
committee of the College.

2. To serve as an ex officio member of the University
Senate.

F. Professional Standing

The department head is expected to participate in teaching
and research, whenever it is feasible, and to maintain
appropriate relationships with the technical, scientific,
and scholarly organizations in his field.2

 

2The Pennsylvania State University Faculty Handbook as quoted
in James Brann, "The Chairman: An Impossible Job About to Become
Tougher," in James Brann and Thomas A. Emmett, eds., The Academic
Department or Division Chairman: A Complex Role (Detroit: Belamp
Publishing Co., 1972), pp. 7-10.

Dr. Murray of Pennsylvania State University comments:

Such an horrendous list could hardly be the product of any
intelligent aiministrative process. It must have been
compiled either by (l) a committee of sadistic faculty
members who hated department heads, or (2) a group of
cowardly vice-presidents and deans who had never been
department heads themselves and who were trying to find
somebody in the administrative hierarchy to serve as a
scapegoat, or (3) a group of department heads who were
simply endeavoring to be funny.

The point is that no head could possibly perform all the
functions listed and hence the entire business acquires
a touch of absurdity.3

Later, Brann articulates the reactions of many chairpersons
to the overwhelming multiplication of responsibilities:

The seat of the chairman is an uneasy one in an era of
societal change. He must make the existing system function
while keeping an open ear and mind toward the cries for
academic reform. Rushing toward him from one direction is
the puzzling and somewhat alarming spector of unionism and
from another, the often-ill-informed political representa-
tives of a dissatisfied public. Central administrations
aided by computers and long-overdue applications of man-
agement principles are becoming increasingly powerful and
efficient, leaving the chairman little room to maneuver or
juggle budgetary categories. His faculty is insecure and
resistant to change. And his students scream, "Relevance!"
and want to abolish traditional standards.”

Dressel et a1. pick up the‘same note of being overwhelmed by
a deluge of administrative detail with an accompanying feeling of
frustration.
It was evident that the increasing size of departmental
staff, diversity in faculty interests, and the difficulties
of recruiting qualified students have made the job of the

department chairman more a burden of administrative detail
than one in which imagination and originality can prevail.

 

31bid., p. 10.

“Ibid., p. 27.

It is not that department chairmen are always constrained

by the university systems in which they work (although this
is often the case), but rather that the staggering amount

of routine activities required and the diverse expectations
of the dean on the one hand and the faculty on the other
greatly limit the chairman's authority and deprive him of
satisfaction in his work. Meanwhile, his scholarly career,
which was partly responsible for bringing him the assignment.
is seriously jeopardized.s

The chairperson position is undoubtedly under a state of seige.
It has evolved into a political or quasi-political function which
syphons off increasingly larger portions of time from the historically
perceived tasks of department chairperson--academic leadership, faculty
and student development, and teaching6 and redirects them into
management functions.

As these management functions, including the decision-making
process, become more sophisticated and as the types of decisions and
quantities of information required to make decisions or satisfy report
requests continue to grow, a more efficient system must be developed
or adopted."

Management Information Systems (MIS), especially those tied
into computers, are thought by some to be quite adequate for the task
and have virtually limitless speed and storage capabilities. They can

effectively and efficiently process and recall otherwise unwieldly

quantities of information. Consequently, they have the potential for

 

sDressel et al., p. 82.

6Frank B. Dilley, "The Department Chairman as Academic Planner,"
in James Brann and Thomas A. Emmett, eds., The Academic Department or
Division Chairman: A Complex Role (Detroit: Belamp Publishing Co.,
1972), pp. 29-36.

reducing some of the chairperson's management concerns and are,
therefore, vying for a place in departmental management.7

A second factor encouraging the growth of M18 at departmental
levels is central administration itself which requires and rewards
management skills. Chairpersons are being forced to redefine their
roles, that is, whether to be managers or leaders, or both. In the
process, they must also decide how to store, retrieve and use infor—
mation needed for departmental decisions and university reporting.

It is this problem of storing, retrieving and using selected

departmental information toward which this study is directed.

Background of the Problem

 

The current management, leadership and information problems
of department chairpersons are traceable, in part, to the early
American College.

Although not departmentalized, the endowed chairs and
professorships of the 1720 to 1767 period led the way for George
Ticknor in 1825, with the help of a student rebellion two years

earlier, to reorganize Harvard into six departments. In the same

year, the University of Virginia made a move toward departments by

 

7Dressel et al., pp. 185-210, 232.

°Ib1d., p. 3.

organizing itself into separate and distinct schools, each headed
by a full professor.9

A year later, James Marsh, president of the University of
Vermont, dealt somewhat dramatically for his time with the so-called
disunity of knowledge problem. Shortly after he became president,

he proposed that the studies of the College be divided
into four departments and that students not seeking
degrees be permitted to pursue the studies of a single
department if they desired. In defense of his proposal,
he argued, "It is certainly best for one to get a part
well rather than attempt all with the certainty of
universal failure."10

The University of Michigan in 1837 provided for four departments
and added eight others between 1856-57.

Dressel and Reichard are careful to point out that these early
departmental developments must be regarded only as exemplary and well
preceding the major period for departmentalization in the late nine-
teenth century.11 The principle reasons for their continued growth
at the time were to provide greater flexibility in student programs
and to acquiesce to the needs of research which required specialization.
It was this latter reason which later led to differentiation in ranks.

Cornell University and Johns Hopkins established autonomous

departments in the 1880's, but Dressel and Reichard say,

 

9Paul L. Dressel and Donald J. Reichard, "The University

Department: Retrospect and Prospect," The Journal of Higher Education
41 (May 1970): 387-402.

1°Ibid., p. 398.

llIbid., p. 391.

the

the real solidification of the structure and the academic
rank system came in the 1890's. Harvard moved decidedly
toward further departmentalization around 1891-92; Columbia
was thoroughly departmentalized by the late 1890's with
Yale and Princeton close behind. However, none matched

the University of Chicago in adopting complex organiza-
tional arrangements. . . . In 1892-93, the first year of
instruction, [it] listed twenty-six departments organized
into three faculties: divinity, university extension, and
arts, literature and science. Thirteen head professors
presided as virtually absolute monarchs of departments,
which included staff members holding twelve distinct ranks.12

Summarizing the historical pressures for departmentalization,
same authors conclude:

Perhaps first and most significant was the increase in
knowledge and its gradual organization into reasonably
distinctive disciplines. Vocational specialties, some-

times drawing upon an array of disciplines but occasionally
based largely on an accumulated body of practical experience.
gave further impetus to specialization of instruction. At
the same time, the demise of the unitary classical curriculum
and the demand for alternative programs for the undergraduate
encouraged subdivisions of the faculty. The elective system
fostered an organization according to precise field of study.
Graduate study and research were essentially specialized in
terms of disciplines and virtually required a departmental
structure for effective operation. Naturally, too, the
product of this specialization, the new Ph.D., sought a
departmental affiliation to foster and strengthen his
identity as a scholar in a particular field.

The increasing size, organizational complexity, and
multi-purpose character of the new university rules out
the possibility of operation through a unitary faculty.
Decisions about particular courses and curricula could
only be made by those competent in the field.13

Finally,
the department in American higher education is not the

result of any single force. Specifically, it is not
drawn entirely from the German university, nor is it

 

12Ibid., p. 393.

13Ibid.. pp. 394-395.

10

a result of emphasis on graduate education and research.
Departmentalization of the undergraduate program was
evident in numerous instances before graduate education
had achieved any foothold. The departmental system was
not forced upon the university by a well-defined organi-
zation of knowledge; rather, it resulted from a combina-
tion of orientations to social problems, vocational
preparation, disciplinary interest, personal aspirations,
and management concerns. It is not the only way to
organize a university.‘“

Other commentators have written concerning the same period
of higher education in the United States. One with impressive
credentials is Rudolph. He said that academic institutions during
the last quarter of the nineteenth century occupied themselves with
setting up their ladders of status achievement,15 or rank as we have
come to know it. The cause of which he refers to as "that awesome
proliferation of knowledge which enlarged the scope of a particular

area of human understanding and now required the labors of two or three

men where one had once sufficed. J”5

Then, as if to add insult to injury,

the concept of departmentalization [was added], a symbolic
statement of the disunity of knowledge which was never made
by the old colleges. Then a professor contained within
himself the knowledge and the interests necessary to sustain
him as a teacher of several subjects. Then an untrained
professor like John Bascom at Williams could teach rhetoric,
write books on aesthetics and political economy and introduce
courses in English literature and sociology. But now the old
unity was gone, the avid search for scientific truth was
bringing forth great new contributions to knowledge, and

 

‘“rb1d., p. 396.

lsFrederick Rudolph, The American College and University,
A Histogy (New York: Vintage Books, 1962), p. 121.

1‘1bid., p. 393.

ll

specialization was leading to the splintering of
subject areas.17

A case in point is the Department of Biology at the

University of Chicago which in April, 1893 was re-

organized. Now instead of a Department of Biology,

there were now five new departments: zoology, botany,

anatomy, neurology, and physiology. And that meant five

new departmental chairmanships, five new little hier-

archies, five new competing domains of knowledge and

ambition and interest. Yet, in truth, scholarship

could be served and the growth of knowledge assured

in no other way.18

Knowledge of the historical development of departments does

not solve today's departmental management, leadership and information
problems, but it does provide some perspective for understanding them.19
It is true that departments were established seventy years ago to cope
in part with specialization (new knowledge and its distribution) which
has continued to accelerate and is again forcing departmental managers
in the last quarter of this century to look for yet other strategies,
tools, and patterns of thought that will allow both people and programs

to develop.

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this study is to contribute research to the
field of higher education, in general, and to the study of the

department chairperson in particular.

 

17Ibid., p. 399.
laIbid., p. 400.

19Dressel and Reichard, p. 387.

12

Its primary focus is a descriptive assessment of departmental

faculty data storage systems and the use made of that data. Specifi-

cally, this study provides descriptive data regarding the following:

currently used faculty data storage systems;

the frequency with which presently available faculty
data is used to make decisions in four categories:
salary, tenure, promotion and selection of new
faculty members;

faculty data storage systems desired by chairpersons;
and

the frequency with which the potentially available

faculty data would be used if the desired storage
were in place.

Research Questions

 

What system is presently used to store faculty data?

What system is preferred to store selected faculty
data?

How frequently is the selected faculty data used to
make decisions relative to salary, tenure, promotion,
and the selection of new faculty?

How frequently would the selected faculty data be
used to make decisions relative to salary, tenure,
promotion and selection of new faculty if the
preferred storage system were in place?

What are the descrepancies between the storage system
and the use of presently and potentially available
faculty data across the four decisions of salary,
tenure, promotion and selection of new faculty?

What relationship exists between the size of the
department, the use made of faculty data and the
system used to store faculty data?

13

Definition of Terms

Storage system: a method of organizing and storing faculty data.
This study recognizes three systems:

1. Folder: a file containing selected faculty data collected by
the department chairperson's office.

2. Self-report: any faculty data which the chairperson must request
that is not contained in the folder.

3. Management information system (MIS): any retrieval system, manual
or mechanical, which makes data rapidly retrievable.

Department chairperson: a department chairperson . . . serves as the
chief representative of his or her department . . . within the
University. He or she is responsible for educational, research
and service programs, budgetary matters in his or her jurisdic-
tion, taking into account the advisory procedures of the unit.
The Chairperson . . . has a special obligation to build a
department . . . in scholarship, teaching capacity and public
service.

Instrumentation

 

The questionnaire in this study is designed from studies by

1 2

Doyle,2 Dressel et al.,2 and the Western Interstate Commission on
Higher Education (WICHE).23 It asks for data in four areas: present

form of availability and present use of faculty data items; potential

 

2”Bylaws for Academic Governance, Michigan State University,
1975.

21Edward A. Doyle, The Status and Function of the Departmental
Chairman (washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press,
1953).

 

22Dressel et al., pp. 249-262.

23Glenn K. Miyataki and Robert G. Gray, Academic Unit Planning
Manual, Field Review Edition, Technical Report No. 72 (NCHEMS at WICHE,
1975).

14

(desired) form of availability and potential use of faculty data items.
The data for the first two areas are retrieved from Part I of the
questionnaire and data for the second two areas are retrieved from
Part II of the questionnaire.

The only demographic data requested in the questionnaire is

department size.

Assumptions of the Study

 

The following assumptions are made by the researcher:

1. The respondents' answers to the survey questions are
honest and reflect their accurate description of the
present and potential availability and use of faculty
data.

2. Respondent confidentiality is sufficiently assured so
that lack of anonymity would not bias their responses.

3. By using the entire population of department chairpersons
at Michigan State University (1975-76), an accurate
profile would emerge between size of department, the

use of faculty data, and the retrieval systems which
store the data.

Delimitations of the Study

This study addresses itself to faculty data currently available
to and desired by department chairpersons at Michigan State University,
and the identification of used and preferred retrieval systems.

The observable units of this study are department chairpersons
holding that position at Michigan State University during the 1975-76
academic year. Centers, schools and institutes are not included. Sex,
age, ethnic background, nationality, years as chairpersons, and how

they attained their positions are not considered variables.

15

The seventeen data items and four decisions are given equal
weighting.

This study does not attempt: to gather data relative to all
the faculty data that department chairpersons have or would like
available; to determine what data were available or needed in other
categories of the department chairperson's responsibilities, including
student personnel, finance and curriculum.

Readers are cautioned about generalizing the results of this
study beyond Michigan State University since the sample is taken only
from Michigan State University. Administrators, however, at this and
other universities are encouraged to do similar studies. All depart-
ments, sooner or later, must judge whether a management information

system could assist the departmental administrative process.

Summary

A statement of the problem, namely, the rapid development of
complex responsibilities which point to a need to reevaluate depart-
mental management needs, and a brief history of departments dating
back to the early American College are the principal concerns of this
chapter. In addition, the purpose, research questions, definition of
terms, instrumentation, assumptions and delimitations of the study are

given proper delineation.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

A thorough search of the literature which included ERIC, and
an annotated bibliography of research reports on the administration
of higher education funded by the Department of Health, Education
and Welfare between 1956—1970, reveals the apparent non-existence
of literature related to use of management information systems in
departmental decision-making.

There is, however, a growing literature about departments,
department chairpersons, and the use of management information systems
in higher education, in general. Although this literature is not
directly related to the problem of this study, it does serve two
purposes:

1. to demonstrate the increasingly complex role of
the department chairperson; and

2. to signal the need to simplify its complexity, where
possible, by introducing functional departmental
management information systems that will ultimately
reduce the number of man hours needed for management
concerns and increase the number available for other
responsibilities, including academic leadership.
The literature is presented in two sections: The Department

and Department Chairpersons, and Management Information Systems in

Higher Education. They are offered not with the intention of providing

16

17

a detailed description of either, but to provide a better understanding
of the emerging role of the department chairperson.

The first section is divided into 11 areas of chairperson
involvements: Overview, Duties and Responsibilities, Authority,
Influence, Preparation and Selection, Role of Faculty, Activities,

Style, Role of Conflict, Attraction of the Position, and For the Future.
The Department and Department Chairpersons

Overview

Representative of the literature relative to departments and,
for the purposes of this study, management practices within departments,
Hobbs and Anderson investigated departments at State University of
New York, Buffalo. Their study reveals three discreet departmental
management methods:

1. One-man-carries-the—load organizations in which the
one man is distinctive not for his power and authority
(which are sparse indeed) but rather solely for his

function: he serves, he does not command.

2. Other departments are best described in terms of

"decentralized responsibility": necessary tasks
are widely distributed among the department's
members.

3. And still other departments engage in "symbiotic
administrative processes, with man doing the rest";
that is, a School or College or some other superstruc-
ture provides most of the organizational framework and
performs most of the necessary administrative tasks,
while one departmental member, or a few, accomplish
the remainder.1

1Walter C. Hobbs and G. Lester Anderson, "Academic Departments:
Who Runs Them--and How?" State University of New York at Buffalo, May
1970, p. l. (Mimeographed.)

18

The most commonly used and applicable method of departmental
governance, they conclude, is "a composite of (l) a division of labor
among peers for administrative activities, (2) an oligarchy of the
senior professorial ranks for decision-making with respect to pro-
fessional concerns, and (3) a collegium, i.e., a democracy, for

2

decision-making with respect to curricular affairs." However, the

authors are quick to point out that "the combinatorial possibilities
of organizational models with which to describe any given academic
department are legion."3

In quite a different study of departmental management, Murray

visited 22 universities and notes that:

the degree of prestige of an institution bears a direct
relationship to the degree to which university adminis-
tration is prepared to permit autonomy at the departmental
level. This might be turned around to read: the relative
success of governance within an academic institution is
measured not so much by the success or skill with which

it is governed at the top but by the success and skill
with which its basic academic units govern themselves.“

From this observation he constructs a five-stage theory of
departmental development, which distinguish departments according to
size of staff, the number of course offerings, the emphasis placed on

teaching and research, the prestige of the department, the extent and

 

2Ibid., pp. 16—17.
3Ibid., p. 17.

I'Robert Murray, "On Departmental Development: A Theory," in
James Brann and Thomas A. Emmett, eds., The Academic Department or
Division Chairman: A Complex Role (Detroit: Belamp Publishing Co.,
1972), p. 71.

19

strength of chairperson authority, and'the decision-making process
and who is involved in it.

The components of each of the five stages are not critical
to this study but the author's summary is:

The Theory, especially if stage five becomes the norm
for the largest and the most influential departments,
presents an ironical picture of academic man. Apparently
he starts out under a dictatorship of an absolute head
(stage one) and, even if that rule is benevolent, he
struggles with all his power to be "free" to govern himself
(stage two). In his enthusiasm he creates elaborate schemes
for absolute democracy (stage three), only to discover that
such "freedom to govern" carries with it serious responsi-
bility and that such responsibility cannot be equally shared.
Ultimately he accepts the proposition that only the senior
or tenure members should assume this responsibility and he
constructs an administrative pattern accordingly (stage four).
But finally, as academic administration becomes even more
complex and as his own personal prestige increases, he
surrenders almost all administrative responsibility to
a semi-professional bureaucracy, which he helps to create,
which he claims is subservient to him, but which in time
may come to control him (stage five). Coming almost full
circle, academic man thus substitutes the former arbitrary
authority of an impersonal bureaucratic machine, run by
almost nameless administrative assistants.5

Corson, ten years earlier, indicates the method of depart—
mental management to be less serious than the problem of part-time
chairpersons. He contends that:

chairmen are only part-time administrators; that is, they
devote only a part of their time to problems of budget and
faculty compensation, selection, and promotion; to student
admissions; to class scheduling; and to similar nonteaching
or research tasks. Nearly all chairmen teach for a major
portion of their time and are expected to maintain their
scholarly productivity.°

 

51b1d., pp. 71-72.

6John J. Corson, Governance of Colleges and Universities
(New York: McGraw—Hill Book Company, 1972), p. 88.

20

But, he says, they also labor under three substantial handicaps.
They are:

l. The department chairperson is "in between" the
expectations of the administration on the one side
and the faculty on the other. Much more than any
counterpart in industrial or governmental organization
the department head(s) are looked to to represent their
subordinates while being expected by their superiors to
voice the views of the administration.

2. In representing the administration, it is the department
chairperson who face(s) the substantial specialization
of their faculties. The naive assumption that prevails
in many organizations that the supervisor "knows more"
is nowhere less applicable than in the college faculty.
The academic officer often must make decisions about
educational programs and competence of individual
teachers with little knowledge or appreciation of
their specialties.

3. In representing the faculty, each department head . . .
voices the views of a narrow segment of the whole insti-
tution. Few are able to think comprehensively in terms
of the needs and interests of all departments, and of
all schools that constitute the aggregate of knowledge
that is to be integrated in a program adapted to the
needs of the oncoming generation.

What with these near convulsive stages that departmental
management experiences, what then is expected of the chairperson?
What does he/she do? How does he/she do it?

Underwood briefly describes the ideal chairperson as one

who plans, organizes, evaluates, communicates, and controls the

job, not the people.8

 

71bid., pp. 95-96.

8David Underwood, "The Chairman as Academic Planner," in
James Brann and Thomas A. Emmett, eds., The Academic Department or
Division Chairman: A Complex Role (Detroit: Belamp Publishing Co.,
1972), pp. 156-157.

21

Hemphill suggests that departments with good administration
are led by chairmen who (1) take initiative in devising new ways of
solving departmental problems while (2) developing warm, considerate
relationships with members of the department.9

McConnell says, "the successful leader (chairperson) must be
able to reconcile individual interests with departmental responsibil-
ities, and departmental interests with the more inclusive goals of
college and university. In doing so, the chairman must not lose the
initiative, must not fail to press for improvement and innovation,
the while he treats his colleagues with respect and consideration."10

Kreyche compares the department chairman to the army's top
sargeant who runs the company, and everybody knows it. Later, he
calls him the "human disposal for all paperwork. . . . His office
is the sewage treatment plant for academe which recycles everything,

u 11

making it useful again. With regard to the roles that chairpersons

 

9J. K. Hemphill, "Leadership Behavior Associated with
the Administrative Reputation of College Departments," Journal
of Educational Psychology 46 (November 1955): 385-401, as quoted
in T. R. McConnell, "Notes for a Talk on Departmental Organization,"
paper presented at Workshop for Departmental Chairmen, sponsored by
WICHE and the Institute for College and University Administrators,
Salishan, Oregon, November 1967, Monograph No. 5, p. 5.

 

10T. R. McConnell, "Notes for a Talk on Departmental
Organization," paper presented at Workshop for Departmental Chairmen,
sponsored by WICHE and the Institute for College and University
Administrators, Salishan, Oregon, November 1967, Monograph No. 5,
pp. 6-7.

11Gerald F. Keyche, "Apologia for Department Chairman,"
Intellect 101 (October 1972): 49.

22

play, he says that, "as with holding public office, he (the chairperson)
alternates playing the roles of buffer and ombudsman, whether for the
faculty, students, staff or administration. He organizes, persuades,
and, at the grassroots level, carries out the mandate of his
constituency. . . ."12
Morgan writes that deans in community colleges view the
"department chairmen either as expediters or helpmates directly
involved in the decision-making process as an adjunct function of
his convictions."13
He describes chairpersons as "functionaires" whose roles
have not been clearly defined but instead have been borrowed from
paternalistic-type practices of common school district
superintendents.1"
Booth characterizes the chairperson as one who must know
and understand the "divergent interests of faculty and administration

and makes independent judgments as to how these interests can best be

integrated."15

 

“mmnp.w.

l3Don A. Morgan, "Institutional Deans and Chairmen in the
Community College: A New Identity Crisis on an Old Theme," in
James Brann and Thomas A. Emmett, eds., The Academic Department
or Division Chairman: A Complex Role (Detroit: Belamp Publishing
Company, 1972), p. 171.

'“Ibid., p. 170.

15David Booth, "Some Reflections for Prospective Chairmen of
Academic Departments," in James Brann and Thomas A. Emmett, eds. .Thg
Academic Department or Division Chairman: A Complex Role (Detroit:
Belamp Publishing Co., 1972), p. 75.

23

He offers two sobering thoughts to new chairpersons. There
are, he says, "(1) few rewards, psychological or financial, and (2) high
professional risks, that is, losing touch with research and researchers
in one's professional area (professional obsolescence)."16

In light of this and before accepting a position as chairperson,
he recommends that the candidate ask and answer two questions: What
does the dean expect of me? What does the department expect of me?

Lastly, Mahoney urges that the chairperson be antimanagerial.
Says the author:

the value of chairman is to be antimanagement, to realize
any present "systems" are obsolete. . . . How to be anti-
managerial? Be visible. Be accessible. The success of
a chairman is in direct, but inverse proportion to the
size of his office. Don't work with appointments only.
If you must do so, limit the appointment system to your
faculty. They are mature and appreciative enough of
demands on your life to accept it.

Mahoney's second message is change, the dynamic nature of
everything--of power, of authority, of knowledge, of time. Everyone
changes, including deans, chairpersons, faculty and students. And as
these changes occur they must be responded to, not ignored. Quoting
what he calls "a contemporary Chaucer," he says, "'Times, They Are
A-Changing.’ Are we?"18

The ideal chairperson possesses five characteristics according

to Heimler. They are:

 

'GIbid., p. 73.

17John F. Mahoney, "Chairman as Messmaker," in James Brann and
Thomas A. Emmett, eds. The Academic Department or Division Chairman:
A Complex Role (Detroit: Belamp Publishing Co., 1972), p. 180.

 

181bid., p. 183.

24

1. Character. The ideal chairman uses discretion,
makes good judgments, is in control of his emotions,
is committed to human values, has the courage of his
convictions, is capable of independent thought, and
gains satisfaction through the achievements of others.

2. Administrative frame of reference. The ideal
chairman possesses or has a predilection toward the
development of an understanding and appreciation of
the role of administration in promoting the goals
of a college, and is willing to accept administrative
authority and responsibility as legitimate concerns
in his attitudes towards college policies and
programs.

3. Job skills. The ideal chairman is able to chair
meetings, write letters, organize and direct work
for secretaries and student assistants, make the
semester schedule, prepare agenda, review research
proposals, and maintain departmental records.

4. Human relations. The ideal chairman has a basic
understanding of and skills of counseling, advising,
compromise, compassion and democratic processes.

5. Professional ability. The ideal chairman is
outstanding in teaching, research and scholarship,
consulting, college and community service; has an
informed vision of his department's discipline and
of its contribution to a student's education.19

Duties and Responsibilities

 

Chairpersons in some universities are provided lengthy
descriptions detailing every aspect of their responsibilities.

To wit: The Pennsylvania State University Faculty Handbook,2°

 

19Charles Heimler, "The College Departmental Chairman," in
James Brann and Thomas A. Emmett, eds., The Academic Department or
Division Chairman: A Complex Role (Detroit: Belamp Publishing Co.,
1972), p. 203.

2°The Penn State Faculty Handbook as quoted in James Brann and
Thomas A. Emmett, eds., The Academic Department or Division Chairman:
A Complex Role (Detroit: Belamp Publishing Co., 1972), pp. 7-10.

 

25

cited in Chapter I. A second and third comprehensive list of
chairperson responsibilities can be found in Appendices A and B.

In general, and in briefer form the common duties of chair-
persons in universities are clearly described by Dressel et a1. (1972),
also cited previously in Chapter I, but repeated here for convenience.

Tradition and faculty demand require the chairman to
be a scholar, but the demands placed upon the chairman
include many functions: Chairmen, initiate action on
budget formulation; selection, promotion, and retention
of academic staff; faculty salaries; sabbatical leaves;
interdepartmental relationships; research grants; educa-
tional development and innovation; university committee
membership; discipline representation; professional growth;
advice to dean on departmental matters; administration to
faculty relationship; new faculty orientation; departmental
meetings; adequate non-orientation; departmental meetings;
adequate non-academic help; student administration; student
advising; class scheduling; student personnel records; faculty
load; graduate student application approval; grading standards
and practices; and curriculum changes. Also, they have
knowledge of the administrative routine of the college;
institutional legislative organization; government grants
procedures; policies relating to graduate students; and
scholarly productivity of department faculty.21

David Henry lists responsibilities of the "gifted
administrator, who manages to keep morale high, to concentrate on

important issues and decisions, to get the housekeeping done, and

to plan for the future. . ."22

They are:

1. Representation of the department to the college, to
the university, to the inter-institutional academic
scene, and to the public. In performing this function,

 

21Paul L. Dressel, F. Craig Johnson, Philip M. Marcus, The
Confidence Crisis, An Analysis of University Departments (San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers, 1971), p. 13.

22David Henry, "The Department Chairman," Management Forum13
(February 1974): l.

26

the chairman reflects not only his or her own views
on policy matters, but those of colleagues, even when
there is not consensus within the department.

Representation of the administration of the college

and university to the department. When this service

is not adequately and fairly performed, an institution
will suffer from dissension and immobility. The task
is not always popular, pleasant, or easy. If a central
administration is regarded as remote or distant, the
fault is frequently the failure of the department head
in this function of interpretation.

Exercise of initiative and leadership to provide
analysis, options, and alternatives in the most
important decision-making of the institution: the
selection and advancement of personnel.

Persistent and careful sifting of departmental agenda,
particularly items concerning program planning and
effective performance. The chairman must keep ques-
tions alive until a conclusive decision has been reached.
A department cannot afford to drift.23

O'Grady, in a study of two-year colleges in Missouri

and Illinois, finds the responsibilities of most chairpersons in

larger colleges to be:

1.

2.

preparation, administration and control of the budget.

recruitment of faculty, screening of applicants,
interviewing of applicants, evaluation of teaching,
and recommending dismissals;

initial salary placement, recommending salary increases,
advancement in academic rank, leaves of absence and
sabbatical leaves;

to teach at least one class, determine courses and
sections to be offered, time schedule of classes,
assign classrooms and faculty, course review and
revision, and new course development;

to serve as academic major advisers;

to provide recommendations to employers;

 

231bid., p. 2.

27

7. to serve on occupational advisory committees;

8. to assign faculty to college committees' departmental
duties;

9. to maintain course outlines;
10. to maintain departmental test files;

11. to assume responsibility for non-academic personnel
administration;

12. to hold frequent departmental meetings;

13. determination of departmental objectives, regulations;
course descriptions in the college catalog, and content
of departmental publications and brochures;

14. to maintain personnel records on faculty and clerical

staff; class lists; to sponsor departmental student

groups; to report student grades, and maintain grade

books.

The same author observes that the department chairperson has
become a key academic and administrative officer, and cites Richardson,25
who points out the absence of literature and research on the chair-
person, especially in two—year colleges. Both researchers stress
the consequent need to assess and adequately define the chairperson's
role and responsibilities and conclude that chairpersons continue to
become even more powerful. They urge a systematic evaluation and
redefinition rather than to leave its development to chance.

In another study, Albert Smith investigates twelve public

two-year colleges in Michigan "to determine what the faculty members,

 

2"James O'Grady, "The Departmental Chairman," Junior College
Journal 41 (February 1971): 32-36.

25R. C. Richardson, Jr., "Departmental Leadership in the Two-Year
College," Current Issues in Higher Education (Washington, D.C.: Associa-
tion for Higher Education, NEA, 1967), pp. 244-248 as quoted in O'Grady,
p. 32.

chairmen, and upper-echelon administrators expected of their chairmen.

28

"26

Some of his findings include:

1.

Both faculty members and upper-echelon administrators
support the position that chairmen should teach one or
more classes each quarter. Chairmen do not completely
agree.

Chairmen and their superiors favor the practice of
having chairmen assign faculty members to teaching
schedules; faculty members take a less favorable
position.

Chairmen indicate that they consider the assignment
of work space and teaching work loads as essential
duties. The other groups do not see these duties
as being essential to the chairman's role.

There is a rather high consensus among chairmen,
faculty, and upper-echelon administrators that
chairmen need not conduct research projects.

There is a high consensus that chairmen should provide
orientation for new faculty members in the departmental
decision-making process, and evaluate faculty.

The counseling or advising of students and the imple-
menting of in-service education programs for faculty
rank as essential activities according to chairmen
and their superiors. Faculty members as a group

are less supportive of these activities.

None of the groups surveyed felt there is any great
need for chairmen to involve students in the
departmental decision-making process.

The chairman's participation in the recruitment of
full-time faculty is viewed as a highly essential
activity.

High agreement exists among all samples that the
chairman should encourage faculty to participate
in conventions, conferences, etc., and that he
should report department accomplishments to his
superiors.

 

Junior

26Albert Smith, "Department Chairmen: Neither Fish Nor Fowl,"
College Journal 42 (March 1972): 40-43.

29

10. Faculty members believe that chairmen have an obligation
to seek larger shares of college funds for their depart-
ments. Chairmen and upper-echelon administrators attach
less importance to this supportive activity.

11. According to all groups, chairmen have the highly
essential obligations to develop long range depart-
mental goals and to plan for future departmental
equipment needs.

12. The preparation of the department's budget is viewed
as a highly essential activity. All groups also agree
that the chairmen should oversee the internal allocation
of budget funds, resolve conflicts among department
faculty members, and review statistical data related
to departmental performance.

13. Faculfy members de-emphasize the chairman's role in
approving additional class cards, or in determining
which courses will be offered or cancelled each term.
Chairmen and upper-echelon administrators believe,
however, that chairmen should perform these duties.
l4. Deans and college presidents have a greater tendency
to expect their chairmen to resolve student-faculty
conflicts than do department faculty or chairmen.
This finding illustrates a need for further
clarification of the chairman's role in the
area of conflict resolution.27
On the basis of his own research, Smith recommends that the
department chairman's responsibilities be better defined and that
his/her role behavior be further investigated using the same six
categories of analysis as this study: (1) Production, (2) Maintenance,
(3) Boundary: Production, (4) Boundary: Institutional Supportive,
(5) Adaptive, and (6) Managerial.
Ahmann describes some of the duties of the department

chairperson and suggests that he/she has two critical choices to make

‘with regard to his/her perceived role: (1) He/she may consider

 

27Ibid., pp. 41-44.

3O

him/herself primarily a faculty member, that is, first among equals,
or as an academic administrator; (2) He/she may consider him/herself
primarily a convenor and coordinator, or an educational leader. He
proposes, of course, that the chairperson be an academic administrator
"with all the accompanying responsibility for displaying educational
leadership. . . . The chairman should be an administrative activist."28
To illustrate his point, he asks the reader to examine three
situations in which department chairpersons are likely to become
involved.

1. Systematic course, curriculum and program development;

2. Recruitment of faculty and the evaluation of their
ultimate effectiveness;

3. Participation in faculty government of all kinds at
all levels.

In the first situation, systematic course, curriculum and
program development, Ahmann argues that the cognitive, affective,

and motor taxonomies developed by Bloom, Krathwohl, and Simpson,

"29 He says,

respectively, are "absolutely crucial.
It is axiomatic that a departmental faculty must

constantly guarantee the students and itself that no
unnecessary duplication exists in the curriculum and
that, whenever possible, complete integration has been
made between its courses and those of other units. Armed
with two-way tables developed by faculty members under his
leadership, the chairman is in a position to conduct the

 

28J. Stanley Ahmann, "The Emerging Role of Departmental Chairman:
Be An Administrative Activist!" paper presented to the WICHE Department
Chairman Program, April 1969, p. 4.

291bid., p. 6.

31

evaluation of the effectiveness of existing courses, both
in and outside his department, and all proposals for new
courses.30

Without forceful leadership from a departmental chairman,
few faculty members will be willing to think of their
courses and curricula in terms of such a pattern.
Inevitably, failure to do so generates course overlap
and permits voids in the curriculum to exist.

He caps his remarks by saying, "Believe it or not, the true

cutting edge of budget planning is course and curriculum planning."32

In the second situation, the department chairperson is involved
in the recruitment and evaluation of the faculty. Ahmann is of the
opinion that if there is one outstanding criterion by which a depart-
ment chairperson should be evaluated, it would be his/her ability to
recruit faculty and evaluate their effectiveness. He says,

Faculty recruitment is a 365 day-a-year job. It is based

on the obvious principle that the chairman must find the

best man for a vacancy that exists. Ideally, he establishes

a detailed job description and then with the assistance of the
faculty, searches for suitable candidates with the anticipation
of employing the most qualified one. . . .

Clearly, it is the chairman's responsibility to describe
analytically to this person his duties and responsibilities,
and the standards of performance to be applied. He also
must review the degree to which these are met. Success

and failure should both be emphasized in these confidential
interviews. Any important failures should be viewed as
extremely serious during this probationary period. . . .

More often than not, the bent of the faculty at large is
to be generous. Should a young faculty member be found
less than fully competent during his probationary period,

 

3°Ibid., p. 7.
31Ibid., p. 6.

32Ibid., p. 7.

32

many will argue that--by some mystical process-~all will
end happily. This polyanna viewpoint is short-sighted and
must be resisted. . . . If the faculty member is to carry
his share of the load during the long haul, he must easily
surpass the standards of performance set up during his
probationary period. Only the activistic chairman can
insist that soft-headed and over-generous evaluation by
some colleagues be ignored when a young faculty member
does not quite measure up. The name of the game is
production—-solid and full blown. The neophyte needs

to be taught the game early. The chairman must lead

the charge to deny tenure to a young faculty member who

is not presenting clear-cut evidence that he is capable

of such production in the achievement of departmental
goals.33

The third situation, participation in faculty government, is
one in which the department chairperson must assume a leading role.
In effect, says the author, he must give the example. Practically,
the chairperson must represent his department to the faculty at large,
promote "university-wide legislation which will enhance . . . his
department. . . . He should be the communication interface between
his department and all other departments, and between his department
and all college and university-wide committees. . ."3"

Further, Ahmann says that a department cannot be all things
to all people. Therefore, the department must decide the courses it
will not teach, faculty it will not hire, research it will not do,

and students it will not admit.35

 

33Ibid., pp. 7-10.
3“11318., p. 11.

35Ibid.

33

Only the forceful department chairman can produce a

crystallization of these points and then explain and

defend them to colleagues. . . . The chairman is the

first line of offense and the first line of defense.

. . . This requires a comparatively unselfish view of

his functions, and the willingness to exert aggressively

the position of the department. . . .36

One of the reactors to Ahmann's position paper was Austin

Van Pelt, Chairman, Department of Sociology and Psychology, Arapahoe
Junior College, Little, Colorado. He has two reactions. First, unlike
the university, the junior college, he says, is all things to all people.
"There is a very real pressure upon us to meet the post-secondary
educational needs of every type of individual in our community."37
Second, he believes that department chairpersons should be educational
leaders within institutions of higher education. But he also believes

that this role cannot be carried out if the power structures are not

thoroughly understood and massaged.

Authority

Authority and role responsibility for department chairpersons
seem to be inextricably tied together. When one is inadequately
defined, the other shares the same lack of definition. O'Grady38 and
Richardson39 noted the insufficient research and lack of role definition

for chairpersons in many institutions. Dressel et 31. add their lament

 

361bid., pp. 11-12.
37Ibid., p. 1, Reactions II.
38O'Grady, p. 33.

39Richardson, p. 270.

34

by saying, "the authority of [the department] is inadequately spelled

out in many institutions.“0

Such a predicament is confusing to students, faculty,
chairpersons, and central office administrators and results in
delayed decisions, even decisions of a critical nature.

However, when institutional definitions of authority are
lacking, other measures taken by chairpersons help to establish
their authority. For example, Dressel et a1. say,

The success of a department chairperson lies in his
attaining not just the full share of the institutional
resources due his department, but in attaining something
more, if at all possible, to provide that department with
an edge not only within the institution but in the national
competition implied by the disciplinary orientation."1

Corson regards the chairperson as a "key administrative
officer,“2 in the typical American university and believes that
if the department is his/her real responsibility, not a reluctantly
assumed one, that

the department chairman does hold substantial authority
because of his influence over personnel policies and

instructional assignments and his position in the formal
communication between faculty members and administration.”

3
It appears, for the moment at least, that authority is one of
the moving, balancing parts of a mobile called chairperson and appears

tangible only in relation to the other moving parts.

 

I'oDressel et al., p. 220.
”'Ibid., p. 221.
“ZCorson, p. 94.

“3Ibid., p. 92.

35

raver.

Attempts have been made to measure the power of departmental
chairpersons but it seems at best a difficult task. What does emerge
are perceptions of power. For example, Hill and French (1967)““ find
that chairpersons are perceived to have less power as a group than
other faculty or administrative groups. Gross and Gramsbsch (1968)"5
describe the perceived power structure in the administration of higher
education and positioned the department chairperson in the middle of
that power structure. Their study also reveals that the faculty as
a group were thought to have more power than chairpersons as a group.

As for the source of power, Hill and French indicate that it
(power) derives more from the way the chairperson plays his/her role
than from the organizational or formal status of his/her position.
But there are two general sources of power, according to the authors:

1. The possession of certain sanctions over the members
of the department that arise out of his position;

2. Personal and interpersonal factors: knowing what
goes on in the institution, relationships with higher
administrators and other department chairmen, contact
with important external agencies, supportive and
helpful relationships with colleagues, etc."6

 

I"'Winston W. Hill and Wendell L. French, "Perceptions of Power
of Department Chairman by Professors," Administrative Science Quarterly
11 (1967): 548-574, as quoted in Dressel et al., pp. 60, 243-244.

 

l'sGerald Bachman, David Bowers, and Philip M. Marcus, "Bases of
Supervisory Power," in A. Tannenbaum (ed.), Control in Organizations
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), as quoted in Dressel et al., p. 247.

76Hill and French, in McConnell, pp. 5-6.

36

Turning to the question of the effect of power, Dressel et a1.
conclude,

There is greater satisfaction reported among faculty when
they have a relatively powerful chairman: clique structures
are decreased in importance, and faculty can devote more
time to their own interests outside of the departments which
lead to rewards. A weak chairman creates a power vacuum
which others attempt to fill. . . . What seems to be
important [here], is that faculty satisfaction does not
decrease under conditions of power if this power is based
upon actions which are considered appropriate by those who
must provide compliance. The implications of these two
studies [Hill and French, and Dressel et al.] are that
satisfactions are not based on pure autonomy and lack of
structure. An assumption frequently found in the liter-
ature is that faculty resent hierarchic influence over

their actions. Research thus far does not confirm this
assumption."7

In referring to the Hill and French study, the same authors
comment, "In departments where the faculty reported relatively greater
power for the chairman, the faculty satisfaction and productivity was
also relatively higher."“8
It seems clear that chairpersons do have power. 'How much'
depends on personality, inter- and intra-institutional connections,
reputation, the precise state of democratic departmental development,
tradition, and the use of formal and informal organizational structures.
Mahoney, in recognizing their power, warns:
The chairmen are a ring of faculty power. Knowing what
they are about, they are the conscience of a school.
They are also its blood, its bones, its vitality.
Informed, united with their departmental faculties,
they are inseparable. Uninformed, fearful, and
"systems men" they are tools."9

“7Dressel et al., pp. 247-248.

““lbld., pp. 243-244.

l”Mahoney, p. 182.

37

Influence

According to Dressel et al., the influence factor of department

chairpersons is difficult to establish and the data are not easily

explained.so However, they have pulled together five rather specific

commonalities relative to influence:

1.

The position and the influence of the department
chairman varied greatly throughout the departments

and universities. In some, the department chairman,
sometimes called a head, controlled virtually all
aspects of departmental affairs. He made the depart-
mental budget, assigned teaching loads, recruited and
hired, promoted and rewarded or disciplined individuals
with little or no consultation. At the other extreme,
the chairman was little more than a coordinator who

was expected to garner resources from the dean to carry
out the decisions of the faculty. In between were the
vast majority of chairmen who worked within a set of
policies or bylaws and operated through or with faculty
committees. These are the chairmen who are besieged by
both the dean and faculty to represent and reconcile
the often divergent interests. As such, they are like
foremen, men in the middle, who are besieged by both
management and workers to represent and promote the
divergent interests of both parties. To be successful
they must win and maintain the confidence of both groups
by compromise or by less straightforward means which
threaten their own integrity.

University orientation in those departments where the
chairman was influential can be inferred from other
findings. For example, in departments where the
chairman was influential, faculty gave a high priority
to teaching undergraduate nonmajors and to career
development of junior staff. . . .

Less influential chairmen were found in departments
that delegated decision-making, had productive faculty,
and promoted the department nationally (for example,
serving on journals as editors or consulting government
or industry). From these findings we would conclude
that the most influential chairmen are found in depart-
ments where faculty are relatively inactive.

 

soDressel et al., pp. 83-84.

38

4. . . . The chairman's influence is often the key factor
in determining the quality of a department.

5. Whatever the particular configuration of administrative

influence emanating from the department chairman's

office, the position still possesses some connotations

of prestige and power. For example, when faculty were

asked to whom they would go for special consideration

of eight problems which they might confront, the

department chairman was overwhelmingly chosen.51
Preparation and Selection

Corson, pointing to the preparation of department chairpersons,
said, "Many men who are well-trained, experienced, and accomplished in
teaching and research lack the requisite skills for bringing about
educational advance through the typical structure of a university."52

His view is supported by McKeachie, Heimler and Dilley.

McKeachie observes that "although the department chairmen in
most colleges and universities are key individuals in determining the
educational success of the institution, they are generally ill-prepared,
inadequately supported, and more to be pitied than censured."53

Heimler notes two serious problems of chairpersons: "(1) . . .
too often the position of department chairman is held by a faculty

member who lacks the requisite qualifications for discharging the

responsibilities of the office; (2) . . . the relatively rapid turnover

 

511bid., pp. 80-84.
52Corson, p. 92.

53Wilbert J. McKeachie, "Memo to New Department Chairmen," in
James Brann and Thomas A. Emmett, eds., The Academic Department or
Division Chairman: A Complex Role (Detroit: Belamp Publishing Co.,
1972), p. 43.

39

due to resignation"5“ (see Appendix C). He also believes that the
department chairperson is only a part-time administrator whose main
interests should be teaching, research and scholarship.

Dilley intimates that presidents, provosts and deans are not
able to be academic leaders because of managerial responsibilities
and, therefore, the responsibility falls to department chairpersons.
But he concedes that many obstacles block effective academic leadership
by the chairperson. They include:

1. an absence of good literature about and for
departmental chairpersons;

2. absence of long-range plans and a lack of budgetary
information with a corresponding measure of control
over it;
3. the wagging of departments by more specialization,
more money, faster promotions . . . (departmental
primacy must supercede individual self-interest);
4. power neither understood nor skillfully used;
5. inappropriate and inadequate economic housekeeping.SS
In short, he is saying that they are not prepared to do the job.
O'Grady asks if administrative ability is important in the
selection process to which department chairpersons of large two-year
colleges said, "yes" two to one, but small two-year college chair-

persons by nearly one-half said, "not important" or "of little

importance."

 

5" Heimler, p. 200.

55Frank B. Dilley, "The Department Chairman as Academic Planner,"
in James Brann and Thomas A. Emmett, eds., The Academic Department or
Division Chairman: A Complex Role (Detroit: Belamp Publishing Co.,
1972), pp. 28-36.

 

40

Both groups do think that "teaching experience, teaching
ability, ability to deal harmoniously with others, productive

scholarship, degrees held and departmental seniority are "important

in selecting a chairperson."56

Should the faculty have a voice in the selection of a chair-
person? According to Fellman, the faculty has a right to be involved
in selection and evaluation proceedings. He points out that the AAUP
recommends chairpersons be elected and for a limited term. He also

endorses an annual review to provide "solid protection against the

tyranny of an entranched chairman."57

Says Fellman,

In considering the functions of the departmental chairman,
however, it must be borne in mind that in a properly run
institution the faculty has both the right and the duty
to participate in a meaningful way in the making of
policy decisions at all levels of authority. . . .58

Gross cautions about the departmental democratization process.

The fact that work units are granted considerable autonomy
in dealing with their basic problems does not insure that
they will in fact resolve them. . . . [Departments are
frequently unable to meet their responsibilities] because:
(1) the egocentric orientation of the academic man; (2) the
reward system of the academic world and the university; (3)
the latent competition among academic men; (4) the academic
man's multiple roles and the attendent problem of allocating
his time; (5) the ambiguous nature of the chairman's role.

. . . [He further acknowledges that decentralization will

be effective] only when: (1) members of the department have
a basic concern for the welfare and productivity of the unit

 

56O'Grady, pp. 33-34.

57David Fellman, "The Departmental Chairman," paper presented
at the 22nd National Conference on Higher Education, sponsored by the
Association for Higher Education, Chicago, March 1967, p. 3.

591618., p. 4.

41

as a whole; (2) members of the department work effectively
together; (3) members of the group have time to devote to
departmental problems.59

Role of the Faculty
Fellman speaks almost of a moral right and duty of full
faculty participation in all departmental matters. He says,

The departmental faculty should be, to the furthest
extent feasible, a self-determining group in which
policy decisions are made only in the light of the
widest possible participation by the academic staff.
This is how self-respecting faculty should Operate,
and this offers some additional security against
administrative tyranny at the chairman level.60

In addition, to allow for a full measure of grievance
opportunity, he proposes a committee,

a very prestigious elected faculty committee . . .
[which] should be a small committee, capable of
meeting frequently and acting swiftly, and it should
be the only one of its kind, a self-confident focus
of faculty support and loyalty. If it carries great
weight among all parts of the educational community,
if it is in a position not only to listen to com-
plaints but also to do something about them, if it
commands sufficient prestige to be listened to when
it speaks its mind, then the faculty member is not
over-borne by a department chairman who exercises
his authority in a grossly unfair or vindictive
manner.

In counterpoint to Fellman, Edwards, once in favor of faculty
involvement, after three years as political science departmental

chairperson, California State College, has become a strong voice

 

59Neal Gross, "Organizational Lag in American Universities,"
Harvard Educational Review 33 (Winter 1963): 58-73, as quoted in
McConnell, p. 2.

6°Fellman, p. 4.

511618., p. 3.

42

against all faculty participation, save for minimal involvement. He

says of the experience, "I went in thinking the faculty should have

a greater role in running the academy; I left thinking the opposite."62

For him, the present academic governance system simply doesn't work.
"By academic governance, I mean the ways faculty participate in the
day-to-day administration of a college, especially the ways in which
it gives and takes advice and makes recommendations concerning the
privilege and preferment of its own members. These ways subvert true
and worthy academic purposes."63
The author has two major concerns: (a) the real political
nature of the present form of academic governance; (b) the effect of
politics on the rules the faculty writes for itself. "The reason for
maintaining . . . elaborate consultative machinery," he says, "is to
avoid conflict as well as the appearance of being arbitrary. Great
attempts are made to keep things unstructured and for administrators
to remain invisible."6“
These activities call to mind a parallel between academic
decision-making and the political theory of democratic
pluralism. In that theory it is supposed that the polit-
ical process, through the mutual conflict and accommodation
of differing interests in the open society, develops public
policies in the general interest. In the academy it is
supposed that there will be a competition among groups at

every level and that, on balance, what is good for the part
is good for the whole. The business of faculty members of

 

62Scott Edwards, "An Academic Chairman Looks at Governance,"
Change 4 (September 1972): 24.

631b1d., p. 24.

5“Ibid., p. 25.

43

departments is to look out for themselves, and no one is
specially concerned with the common good, or feels that
he should be.65
When situations confront the administrator, says the author,
he must make a decision, "or escape the difficulty through fudging,

"65 The author feels that administrators

delay, and obfuscation.
habitually favor the latter. It's easier and less dangerous, he says.
His second major concern relates to rules written by the

faculty for the faculty. These rules, Edwards comments, come out
of hundreds of hours of debate and reflect a variety of interests
which demand acknowledgment. He likens such rules to political
platforms which offer something to everyone and are "sprinkled with
high-sounding generalities and yet vague at all critical points. . . .
Any governing policy adopted by the faculty is likely to bear the
distinguishing marks of imprecision, a preoccupation with the faculty
narrowly conceived, and a taste for procedural intricacies."67 Such
vagueness of rules, laments the author, affects the department chair-
person in what is his most important duty, evaluating the job
performance of the members of his department.

Here we touch on one of the sustaining myths of academic

life: that every faculty member is a professional, and

consequently, his performance can certainly not be judged

by administrators, and probably not by other professionals

in the same field, either, since each academician has his
own specialty. A closely associated notion is: "After

 

651b1d., p. 25.
66Ibid.

67Ibid., p. 26.

44

all, everyone has his unique style of presenting material,
his own strong points, his own favorite themes, etc., etc.,"
Such fixed ideas--and they are fixed-~inspire bitter
resistance to any attempt to arrive at clear and uniform
standards. The implicit conclusion is that no one can
really judge anyone else. This is a noble view; indeed,
it is the only possible one when the judgments in question
touch on matters of ultimate right and wrong and are
therefore best left to the Supreme Being. Otherwise,

it is the veriest humbug, but this does not keep it from
being passionately believed. I have seen suggestions that
teaching performance be evaluated by periodic class visi-
tations from the chairman, or by having open classrooms
which could be visited by anyone at any time, rouse hot
resentment on precisely the ground that there is no one
fit to judge. Faculty members seem to regard the class-
room as a sanctuary, and the professor's relations to his
students analagous to that of confessor and penitent. It
is difficult to determine the source of this extraordinary
notion, or how it got so strongly established. But it is
plainly one of the dogmas of the academy in our time.

So the department chairman, lacking any systematic
foundation for judgment, relies on what he hears from
students and colleagues. He rehearses the natural ques-
tions: Have there been any complaints? Are there any
obvious reasons to think that a given professor is either
outstanding or hopelessly incompetent? The method, in
short, is intuitive. It is bound to be inaccurate and,
worse, to force the chairman into evasions and dishonesties.
For a chairman is unlikely to give a rating lower than
"satisfactory" even when he knows that a faculty member
is doing a bad job. This is because such ratings infal-
libly lead to demands that charges be proved, and unless
weeks and months of effort have been spent in "building
a case," it is impossible to do. It is more prudent, and
certainly more pleasant, to pretend that faculty members
are uniformly meritorious than to criticize those who are
deficient. The conclusion is inescapable: teaching
evaluations in colleges are proforma exercises in paper
shuffling.68

Edwards concludes that the maladies he describes have a single
cause: "The attempt to adapt the venerable ideal of the self-governing

academic community to a state in which it cannot be realized but only

68Ibid., pp. 27-28.

45

sadly caricatured.' The result is absurdity and dilemma."69 He
proposes two solutions: (1) to continue to "consistently and honestly
develop the half-hidden political conceptions which underlie the present
scheme of academic governance"; and (2) to reduce "faculty involvement
in the day-to-day running of academic affairs to the unavoidable
minimum. Either course clearly abandons the democratic/pluralistic
model."70

The author offers a final suggestion.

We could start down the second of these roads by abolishing
the present structure of academic senates and committees
and replacing it with a single board of faculty members

to act as a council of advisers to the president. This
board would not be elected, but chosen by lot or by rota-
tion. Its size would vary with the size of the college,
but even at the largest it would probably not need more
than twenty members. Those serving on it would be
released from other duties during their term of service.
They would carry on the essential minimum of consultation
with departments on hiring, firing, promotion, tenure, and
important curriculum changes. There is no certainty, of
course, about how well this would work. But it would
surely be worth trying, if only to rid us of the two
gravest ills from which we presently suffer: the enormous
diversion of energy and attention to committee-sitting,
and the constant playing at politics which now'marks the
conduct of academic affairs. It will be said that this
proposal is radical; ans so it is. But almost any change
which promises a return of academic minds to their true
concerns would be welcome.

This suggestion is, of course, utopian and ignores
the forces presently at work in academic life. The
first road I have mentioned--not the elimination of
politics, but the end of our shamefaced way of pursuing
it--seems the likelier direction of change.

‘9lbld., p. 28.

7°Ibid.

46

If we are determined to hold to our political conception
of the academy, we should constitute administration as
management and faculty as labor. Then it would be clear
that these two elements of the academic community (education
industry?) stand in relation to each other in the classic
position of bargainers. Without guilt or apology--and,
above all, without cant--they would do business with one
another, each trying to gain advantages within a system
of tightly drawn and mutually accepted rules.

This would not, in my view, be the best direction for
change to take. But it would be better than what we have,
and it would at least be honest. The question is whether
those most eager to travel such a road fully understand
where it leads. Long-cherished articles of faith would
have to be jettisoned and comfortable, pipe-smoking,
leather-elbowed postures abandoned. Any remaining claim
by administrations to benevolent magistracy would be
abandoned. Tenure would be abolished and replaced by
contracts specifying seniority rights. It is difficult
to see how the main concerns of a management-labor relation
in the academy could fail to be what they are everywhere
else: conditions of work, wages, hiring, firing, prefer-
ment. Let us not entertain any fancies about heroic
efforts to secure that "quality education" one often reads
about. Faculty members could no longer maintain the pose
of unworldly wisdom and dedication to higher things. Nor
could they with any justice continue to claim that what
goes on in the classroom is the affair only of professor
and students, or that excellence in teaching is not subject
to measurement and judgment. Academic freedom? It is to
be hoped that it would be secure. But it would have to be
much more closely defined than it is now. A reformed system
of running the academy would never allow the protective
cloak of academic freedom to be thrown around simple
incompetence and negligence. '

The question is whether we have thought these things
through. And the answer is that we have not. Because we
have not, we continue to flounder and push for changes
which would leave us stranded in a world we never made.
Such, at any rate, are the conclusions of a retired
department chairman.71

 

711bid., pp. 28-29.

47

Activities

 

The activities of the department chairperson vary considerably
between institutions as well as within a single institution. In spite
of these differences, however, Dressel et a1. focus on four common
activities. They relate to: who certifies departmental action; how
chairpersons use their time; some moral and philosophic attitudes of
chairpersons; and the use of committees in departmental management.

1. In the typical university organization, the chairman
was the certifying agent for all actions of the
department: new courses, assignment of teachers
to courses, salary recommendations, and promotion
and tenure actions. Although other officers of the
university can step actions, the chairman is the one
who initiates action.

2. There are some department chairmen who spend most of
their time on the detail and minutiae of running the
department, have not been in classrooms for years,
and have given up research activity long ago. . . .
Others believe that the least administration is the
best administration.

3. Where the department chairman was fair, consistent,
and impartial, he was given a great deal of latitude
by his faculty to make decisions on a wide variety of
topics. When, on the other hand, he became so involved
in the detail that he could not present real leadership,
or he began to develop ideas and values not related to
the department's thinking, he fell out of favor with
his colleagues and very quickly out of favor with
central administration. Much of the chore of the
department chairman is knowing what kinds of things
need to be delegated and what kinds of things are most
efficiently done by one person.

4. Department chairmen felt that they could accomplish
more if they involved their faculty in decision-making
procedures. Although the committee structure was cum-
bersome and involved much extra time on the part of the
faculty, if the decisions were truly made by the com-
mittees, high morale seemed to result. Through the
committee structure and the opportunity to interact

48

with each other on administrative or policy matters,
faculty members developed a mutual trust which yielded
a cohesiveness in the group.72

With mutual trust established through the use of committees,
chairpersons are able to do things in an informal manner that

otherwise would require formal meetings and more time.

Mahoney underscores the need for department chairpersons to
work through committees to assure initial support and avoid mistakes
and backtracking. He says,

The business of a chairman is to devoid himself of suf-
ficient strings of power so that what he gep_accomplish
is not hopelessly obliterated by mistakes. I mean that
he must structure his department in such a way that no
negative decision made is ever autocratic. No dismissal,
no refusal or promotion, no apportion to the Dean's deci-
sion, no rejection of curriculum change. All these, and
many like them, must be elected from his faculty from
elected and even appointed committees. If he cannot
succeed in establishing either, he should resign in
favor of someone who can.73

Style

"The department chairman [is] seen as the center and focus
of the department, and it [is] generally his personality and previous
experience that [dictates] the style and operation of the department."77
Concerning administrative style, Dressel et a1. distinguish
three: (1) the honest broker who attempts to "interpret accurately to

both dean and department the concerns and dissatisfactions of the other;

 

72Dressel et al., pp. 23-26.
73
Mahoney, p. 181.

7"Dressel et al., p. 33.

49

(2) the one who plays one against the other to enhance his own
position; (3) the one who caters "to the dissatisfactions of one,

enforcing its demands on the other. . . . [But, the authors conclude]

only the honest broker role produces healthy reciprocated confidence."75

Role Conflict
Carroll investigates role conflict as it relates to the
department chairperson:

1. To determine the kinds of role conflict that exist
among department chairmen and the relative frequency
of their occurrence, employing Robert Kahn's classi-
fication scheme: intrasender role conflict, inter-
sender role conflict, interrole conflict, and
personrole conflict.

2. To determine whether department chairmen who perceive
that they are exposed to a high degree of role conflict
will report a higher need deficiency than position
incumbents who report that they are exposed to a low
degree of role conflict; and, to determine if there
is any significant correlation between perceived role
conflict and need deficiency.

3. To identify the kinds of decision situations in which
role conflict is experienced and the relative signif-
icance of each decision area in creating conflict
within the department chairman.76
His results indicate a more than random or chance correlation

between perceived role conflict and reported need deficiency of

departmental administrators. He says,

 

7SIbid., p. 141.

76Archie B. Carroll, "Role Conflict in Academic Organizations:
An Exploratory Examination of the Department Chairman's Experience,"
Educational Administration Quarterly 10 (Spring 1974): 34-55.

50

It has been empirically demonstrated that the role conflict
problem does, indeed, manifest itself within the complex
academic organization, particularly at the departmental
administrative level. The research data has shown that
Intersender role conflict is the type most frequently
experienced at this level.

In addition . . . key decision areas that bear on the
role conflict problem.were explored. Specifically, the
respondents ranked six decision areas in terms of the amount
of role.conflict perceived by the chairman while making the
decision. After a weighted ranking system was employed, it
was determined that the highest conflict decisions were those
of faculty salary decisions and faculty promotion decisions.
These were followed, in order, by academic tenure decisions,
faculty hiring decisions, departmental budget decisions, and
faculty time allocation decisions. It was notable that the
highest role conflict decisions related to matters which
personally affected the economic well-being and professional
status of the departmental personnel.

In sum, it has been shown that stress-inducing role
expectations do manifest themselves within the academic
environment. The relationship between perceived role con-
flict and need deficiency suggest deleterious implications
which merit closer examination. In efforts to learn more
about injurious characteristics, structural elements, or
practices within formal organizations, it is advocated that
role concepts and analysis be employed. Role concepts focus
attention upon organizational behavior which is often left
unexamined in more traditional modes of analysis. Most
importantly, role analysis concentrates on the belief that
human behavior is influenced to a considerable degree by
the expectations which are imposed upon organizational
members. Due to increased complexities emerging in
educational systems of today, it is anticipated that
the present study is just one of what will doubtless
be a continuing series of empirical analyses of these
large, labyrinthine organizations.77

Attraction of the Position

Monson, now an associate academic vice-president, recounts

his experience as a department chairperson.

 

77Ibid., pp. 55-56.

51

I worked very hard at the job for two years. I gradually
learned a few things. But, when I looked at the amount of
effort I put into the job in comparison to the changes I
had made in the department, and compared to the satisfac-
tions received from my own teaching and publications, I
was hard put to say to myself that I ought to stay in the
position any longer.78

Similar feelings are expressed by Featherstone in two
departmental research documents written five years apart which attest

9 For both former chairpersons, the

to the slow process of change.7
faculty provide the greatest resistance to change.

Although the position is difficult, complex and sometimes
inadequately rewarded, either psychologically or financially, Booth
says,

There are at least three legitimate reasons for accepting
the chairmanship, not as a chore but as an intellectual
challenge. When performed at a high level of skill, the
chairmanship (l) develops intellectual skills; (2) sat-

isfies important psychological needs; (3) develops one's
professional stature and contacts.

For the Future

 

A rather significant portion of the literature is future
oriented, that is, a delineation of measures that chairpersons should
take to insure the continuing development of the position and the

mission of the department.

 

78Charles H. Monson, "The University of Utah's Department
Chairman Training Program," in James Brann and Thomas A. Emmett, eds.,
_Ihe Academic Department or Division Chairman: A Complex Role (Detroit:
Belamp Publishing Co., 1972), p. 37.

79Richard Featherstone, Michigan State University, in
conversation, February 1976.

8"Booth, p. 74.

52

Dilley says that in the future we will need "to see what the
problems of larger educational units are, and to learn to think of our

departments as contributing members of wider educational entities and

"81

not as the be-all and end-all of education. He suggests a shift is

needed from chairpersons as subject-matter specialists to developers

of departmental programs and co-partners with other departments in
shaping the educational mission of the college and university. Finally,
regarding the nature of chairmanship itself, the author offers three
recommendations:

1. If leadership is time and space tagged-—a more flexible
system of entry into and passage out of administration
is needed so that leaders can be changed as new
circumstances develop.

2. There must be a better educational and financial
support for the creation, care and continuous feeding
of administrators as well as more adequate rewards.

3. There is too sharp a separation between faculty and
administration as though the differentiation of tasks
implied that separate professions exist. Non-teaching
administrators, like non-teaching researchers, while
sometimes practiced of necessity, is inherently
undesirable . . . because it fosters the view of
wholly different professions.82

Koehnline and Blockner agree with Dilley regarding the
principal concentration of the department chairperson.

Because of the breath of his responsibility, the division
chairman cannot function primarily as a subject-matter
specialist. He must think as an administrator, constantly
aware of the interests of all segments of his faculty, and
the relationships of his faculty and programs to the rest

 

81Dilley, "The Department Chairman as Academic Planner," p. 32.

82Frank B. Dilley, "Comments on Administration: A Position
Paper," in James Brann and Thomas A. Emmett, eds., The Academic Depart-
ment or Division Chairman: A Complex Role (Detroit: Belamp Publishing
Co., 1972), pp. 96-98.

53

of the institution . . . . [He] is, after all, something
of an assistant dean of instruction, an assistant dean
of students, and an assistant dean of administration.83

They then ask the question, does the chairperson need a

doctorate. The answer is "no," because he/she "is not primarily

a scholar but a leader of a teaching faculty."8“

Booth outlines a new role for chairperson, one he calls,

an occupational role which combines the skills of the
teacher and researcher. As this role grows in complexity,
as it becomes more specialized, we will see a growing pro-
fessionalization among a core group of chairmen. These

men will dedicate a significant part of their professional
lives to the development of expertise as departmental
developers. In an age of growing specialization, this

kind of expertise is both needed and will be well rewarded.85

Heimler prefers,

to employ a nonfaculty person as departmental executive
responsible to the department chairman. The duty of
the departmental executive, essentially is to manage
the department's administrative details and tasks. A
departmental executive might be responsible for the
workload of several departments, sufficient to make
his position a full-time assignment. . . . This system
has the obvious advantage of increasing efficiency and
economy . . . [and it frees the] departmental chairman
to devote his full time to the improvement of instruc-
tion, student counseling, staff relations, policy
formulation, and program development.

O'Grady, pursuing his belief that the position needs better

definition and training, suggests the following:

 

83William A. Koehline and Clyde E. Blocker, "The Division
Chairman in the Community College," in James Brann and Thomas A.
Emmett, eds., The Academic Department or Division Chairman: A Complex
Role (Detroit: Belamp Publishing Co., 1972), pp. 146-152.

°“Ibld., p. 152.

85Booth, p. 75.

86Heimler, pp. 204-205.

54

l. The chief executive officer of two-year colleges
should make arrangements for an examination of the
administrative organizational structure within his
institution to determine if each office, including
that of the departmental chairman, is defined to
include those activities which best facilitate the
achievement of the aims and purposes of the
institution.

2. Where . . . the role of the "divisional chairman"
now exists, consideration should be given to changing
the title to associate dean of instruction, thus
providing the necessary rank to correspond with
the authority and responsibility of the role.

3. . . . In—service training programs for departmental
chairmen should be established within two-year
colleges and/or within nearby universities and
centers of higher education. . .

4. . . . Consideration should be given to drafting
a departmental manual as a basis for consistent
future action and setting forth principles governing
relationships of departmental colleagues and the
conditions of work necessary to fulfillment of
their functions.87

Sizer, though his comments are those of a retiring dean,
offers critical reactions for chairpersons as they set other goals
and design new programs for the future. They are:

l. . . . The persistent unwillingness of many professional
educators to respect and use theory. . .

2. . . . The continuing unwillingness of professional
educators to recognize that education is more than
schooling. . . .

3. . . . The relative inability of the education profession
to connect the ideas of those working on curriculum
matters with those involved with policy.88

 

e7O'Grady, p. 36.

88Theodore Sizer, "Three Major Frustrations: Ruminations of a
Retiring Dean," Phi Delta Kappan 53 (June 1972): 632-635.

55

Lastly, Henry, in an effort to cause chairpersons and their

departments to reach into many tomorrows asks the following questions:

1.

10.

11.
12.

13.

14.

Has the department clarified its purpose, its goals
in higher education? What place will be given to
graduate study, undergraduate study, developmental
and continuing education?

Do new appointments and promotions relate cohesively
to departmental purposes?

Is the department concerned about the effectiveness of
its teaching? How does it effectively evaluate it?

What are its attitudes to off-campus teaching? To the
community college?

Has it considered a three-year program?

How aware and knowledgeable is the department with
the new technologies of instruction?

Has it considered the advantages of cooperative
education?

Is the department concerned about speaking, writing
and reading?

Is is concerned that more and more authority over
education is going to outside agencies?

What is the role of student participation in
departmental affairs?

What are its tenure plans over the next ten years?
Does it have a plan for meeting affirmative action?

How does the department respond to new demands for
program budgeting, information systems and other
quantitative measurement of departmental and
professional activity?

Is the department chaiperson seeking ways to improve
public understanding of why the university is essential
to a democratic society, relative to its history and
its aspirations.89

 

89Henry, pp. 3-4.

56

SummaEy

The review of the literature throughout the first section
illustrates several crucial points about the departmental chairperson.

1. There is a resounding cry to reevaluate the purpose of
departments and, therefore, the role and responsibilities
of the chairperson.

2. There is a growing complexity of the positions' responsi-
bilities; consequently, there is no one definition of the
chairperson role that is universally applicable.

3. The need to more clearly specify role behavior, especially
the role and extent of authority invested in the position.

4. Adequate compensation, monetary and otherwise, will have
to be provided in order to attract and maintain skillful

managers and academic leaders.

It presents an overview of what some chairpersons do or
should do, and what others would like them to do now and in the future.
It also provides evidence of the sometimes conflicting opinions and
expectations which they themselves and others hold up to measure
performance.

Finally, it reiterates a need, that department chairpersons
be academic leaders and thereby sanctions the re-ordering of other

role expectations, including managerial skills to that priority.

57

Management Information Systems in
Higher Education

Mosmann might be called the father of literature related to
the history of computers in higher education as well as the principle
bibliographic guide to those contemplating installing information
systems in their institutions, or to those shopping for a particular
system, or to those wishing to incorporate CAI (Computer Assisted
Instruction).

While the author directs his comments primarily to those
investigating computers, in general, his observations are apropros
to departmental chairpersons looking to be convinced of the need
for information systems in departmental management. He says,

Still, many members of the administration are not

affected by the advent of office automation. Deans and
vice-presidents, department chairmen, trustees, chancellors,
and provosts live in an environment that is highly unstruc-
tured and very rich in nonquantitative values. They have
important decisions to make and they need information on
which to make them. But they often do not view their
efforts as a deliberate collection and analysis of infor-
mation. They talk to many people and collect impressions
and ideas; they do not consciously structure or evaluate
these data; when the time comes to make a decision, they
may feel they act intuitively, basing their decisions on

a humanistic awareness of values and goals. When they are
offered more precise information, they may doubt that it
will be of any value to them.9°

And, after systems people show off what Mosmann calls their "rich
clutter," the decision-makers are irrational, he says, if they reject

an information system for its insensitivity and inhumanity. If

 

9°Charles Mosmann, Academic Computers in Service: Effective
Uses for Higher Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers,
1973), p. 127.

58

computerized management is to be rejected it must be done, he says,
after all alternatives have been thoroughly investigated.

He is also quick to observe,

[that] information is not in itself valuable, despite its
great and growing popularity; how it will be used is the
key to its value. In their zeal to improve the quality

of information available to administrators, systems people
sometimes overlook the limits to the amount of it that the
administrator can actually use. Such analyses are improving
the quality of the input without assessing the ability of
the system to absorb it. When the system does not improve,
they may then consider that it is the people who are at
fault and throw up their hands in despair. Making the
people better processors of information is a far more
complex and difficult task than the analysts may be able
to tackle.91

For those department chairpersons shopping for information
systems, Mosmann suggests contacting any one of the ten national
organizations. Five are listed in Appendix D.

Bogard, in a nationwide study, gathers data relative to the
numbers of higher education institutions already using offices of
institutional research (IR), management information systems (M18),
and planning-programming-budgeting systems (PPBS). Responses to his
questionnaire indicate that 2.8 percent of 1,873 colleges and univer-
sities have established computerized information systems for decision-
making and 17 percent plan to establish such a system. In addition,
each respondent reacting to the question, What is the most signifi-
cant improvement made in your administrative procedures in the past

five years? according to the author, indicate the use of a computer

to store and manipulate statistical data.

 

9'Ibid., p. 134.

59

The author warns that,

Unless educators become aware of the need for recognizing
and developing new management techniques and measures of
good management, institutions of higher education could
end up with vast numbers of students, high expenditures
on tuition and resources, and a multitude of facilities,
but be able to provide only a small fraction of the
higher education needed.92

But, like Mosmann, he is cognizant of the limitations of the
systems approach. "The systems approach is not a guarantor of 'good'
management, nor is it the sole hope of administrators faced with new
challenges to their administration; it is, however, one approach to
management that has a proven history of success."93

It does permit the institution, says Bogard, to cope with
change which he, along with Doi,9“ believe to be a major criterion
of organizational effectiveness.

Institutions whose chief administrator is responsive to change
and have adopted concepts of scientific management will also provide
for the following functions:

1. Condust of a critical and continuous self-examination

of curriculum and administrative and operational pro-

cedures; examination of the relevance of established

goals and objectives; evaluation of selection and

processing procedures; understanding of the partic-

ipants in the educational process and a continuous

examination of the environment in which the
institution Operates.

 

92Lawrence Bogard, "Management in Institutions of Higher
Education," in A. Mood et al., Papers on Efficiency in the Management
of Bigger Education (Reprinted in Ann Arbor, Mich.: Xerox University
Microfilms, 1976), p. 9.

 

93161d., p. 10.

9"James I. Doi, "Some New Developments in Institutional Research,"
September 1968, in Bogard, p. 10.

60

2. Establishment of relevant goals and objectives;
justification for and allocation of resources
commensurate with current and future demands
for these resources and objectives; continuous
accountability for the expenditure of resources;
maintenance of flexibility in goal-oriented
operations.
3. Development of timely and valid information in
order to achieve the above and to enhance the
validity of decisions.95
"The first of these functions," says the author, "has generally
been performed by members of the institutional staff or by the various
department chairmen, deans, and faculty members as the need arose.
The second is realized in the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System
widely used by the federal government and various school districts.
The third function is essential to the other two and is achieved
through a Management Information System which uses a computer to

"96 He also points out that a MIS need

store and manipulate data.
not be computerized.

But what is a MIS? There are scientific definitions, observes
the author that are so complex they scare people off. But, there are
others which define purpose, or need. These are more attractive
because the benefit of such a system is more apparent. Simply, a

MIS,

1. must provide administrators with information about
the day-to-day operations of the university.

 

gsBogard, p. 11.

96Ibid., p. 11.

61

2. must provide the information needed to develop the
planning capability required for both long- and
short-term planning by means of analytic techniques.

3. must provide the reporting capabilities required by
the societal and economic pressures for accountability.97

Even more simply, an abbreviated definition from Western
Interstate Commission on Higher Education (WICHE) says, "Management
Information Systems provide for the systematic collection and use of
data and for accurate feedback to the administrator of the effects of
an institution's current or proposed operations."98

Featherstone, arguing for the need to establish a departmental
MIS, presents a chart of forces influencing the decisions of the chair-
person (see Figure 1). He says that the sheer number of external and
internal influences affecting departmental decision-making, and the
number of requests for information from inside and outside the uni-
versity indicate the need for a management information system at the
departmental level to provide accurate data to the various sources.99

Among these enormous social, political and personality factors

impinging on the decision-maker, Featherstone maintains that, "the

 

97D. J. Youston et al., Decision Makingfand University Informa-
tions Systems: Analysis and Design, A Status Report on the Integrated
Information Systems Project of the Research Program on Systems Analysis
for Efficient Resource Allocation in Higher Education (New York: The
Ford Foundation, 15 July 1969), as quoted in Bogard, p. 25.

 

98Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, Objectives
and Guidelines of the WICHE Management Information Systems Program
(Boulder, Colo.: WICHE, May 1969), as quoted in Bogard, p. 25.

 

99Richard Featherstone, The Development of Management Systems
for the Academic Department, National Center for Higher Education
Management Systems at WICHE, 1975, 1975, p. 40.

62

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63

real issues that are important to the department manager should be
the human issues. Among the many important questions are":

1. What can be done in the management of the enterprise
to provide for parity and equity in promotion, salary
increases, tenure actions, and employment practices
for faculty? '

2. What can be done to provide the most educational
return to the student for the money and energy
expended?

3. What can be done to improve the quality of
student-faculty interaction?

4. What can be done to improve minority and other
student success in academic as well as professional
11£e21°°

The author continues,

Simplistic answers to these questions would refer to the
need for behavior changes on the part of the participants.
However, a more reasonable overall answer might be to pro-
vide a management system that allows for behavior change
through increased information and improved decision making.
It may be fair to assume that a "community of scholars" will
be persuaded, through the intellectual process, to improve
the effectiveness of education and, at the same time,
achieve a high degree of efficiency and economy. Certainly,
management systems offer the opportunity to transform data
into information that aids in decision making and allows
faculty to see themselves as intelligent decision makers.101

Later, responding in part to those concerned about the de-
humanizing effect of MIS, the author says,

The problems are terribly difficult because the issues are
value-laden, and yet good management can contribute to the
solutions of these problems. Moreover, good planning and
management tools reflect human dignity and value human

 

'°°Ibld., pp. 40, 44.

1“1618., p. 44.

64

contributions to the enterprise. Good management must
be oriented toward serving participants and management
as they work toward organizational goals.0

The real stumbling block, however, to the establishing of an
M18 at the departmental level is whether the industrial systems model
which quantitatively defines, predicts, and measures output is
applicable. He asks,

Can this model be applied to the academic department? Can
the control aspect be developed? Should it be developed?
Is there another approach to goal setting and objective
development? For example, are the real goal-setters and
objective-attainers at the department level, and are these
individuals similar to the productions workers in industry?
Faculty and management might answer these questions differ-
ently. Although faculty see themselves as producers of
education (workers), they see management as a necessary
evil that can be of value only if the manager recognizes
the responsibilities and rights of the faculty. Faculty
tend to believe that they have the right and responsibility
for developing goals and objectives relating to their dis-
cipline. Further, they believe that the hierarchies of
management should be service elements that aid the faculty
in the attainment of faculty-established goals and objec-
tives. Visually the situation might be expressed as in
[Figure 2] .

These positions are probably oversimplified, but
there is more than a kernel of truth to them. It is
possible that the Department Management Systems--DMS-
project will provide a new interface for National Center
for Higher Education Management Systems that is loaded
with potential emotional response. Certainly, many
university administrators have resisted the application
and use of planning and management tools. But some not
only adopt the tools; they do so with enthusiasm. In
the author's experience, there is little enthusiasm on
the part of faculty for the application or the results
of the systems tools. The management-faculty level is
likely to be the crisis level of adaptation to the
adoption of systems development. In order that faculty

 

1“1616., p. 44.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

65

MANAGEMENT
VIEW
(Function)
Establish
I" are: e... e... 5-

Objectives

.. I l

o

H

U

3 Executive

5: ”333191133“: Responsibility

h‘ Levels For Goals &

0 Objectives

in

Q

., I I

d

4'
Producer WhOS¢
Activities

F8CU1CY Result in Attain-
._. ment of Goals
Figure 2.

Source:

Linkage Is Service to Professor

FACULTY
VIEW

 

Board of
Control

 

 

l

 

 

Management
All
Levels

 

 

 

I

Faculty

 

(Function)

Establish
Broad Goals &
Objectives

I

Provide
Executive
Service to
Aid Faculty

1.

Set Goals &
Objectives--
Produce
Activities
that Result
in Attainment
of Goals

Two views of hierarchical roles.

Richard Featherstone, The Development of Manegement Systems

for the Academic Department, National Center for Higher
Education Management Systems at WICHE, 1975, p. 47.

are:

66

and management may work for similar goals, some type of
transition matrix will be necessary. It is possible
that transition may be made through negotiations.”3

The critical problems that face departments interested in MIS

The lack of clear-cut goals and objectives that are
necessary for good leadership and management. Actually,
the absence of goals and objectives seems to assure a
type of crisis management rather than a planned
operation related to objectives and goals.

The lack of definition of the role of the chairman

in decision-making and planning. The chairman often

reacts by keeping track of the activities of faculty

and their wishes. Thus, decisions tend to be made by
an oligarchy.

The degree of autonomy that currently exists within the
organization. The department is either granted or
develops an autonomy that allows for idiosyncratic
development that may or may not be related to the
institutional goals.1°“

Featherstone's final contribution is a list of procedures for

developing a departmental management system (DMS) and a possible DMS

concept (see Appendix F).

The Academic Unit Planning Manual, Field Review Edition,

 

Technical Report 72 is a National Center for Higher Education Management

Systems (NCHEMS) plan to organize the academic unit or department in

relation to its resources and outcomes. Specifically,

[the] manual is designed to improve planning and management

at the academic unit level within an institution by pro-
viding capabilities and procedures to obtain and communi-
cate more definitive information about the unit's functions,
demands, resources and outcomes and to focus on some key

 

1"Ibid., pp. 46-47.

1°“ Ibid., pp. 48-49.

67

planning and management concerns/problems areas that
pertain to the unit.105

It recognizes that,
Academic units (school/college/division/department) are
basic organization units within which the educational
activities of an institution happen, where critical
resources are assigned, and where many of the needs and
interests of personnel are dealt with. Furthermore, while
the academic unit administrator is faced with handling the
multiplicity of demands of faculty, students, institutional
administrators, the legislature, and donors, the administra-
tor's role also includes the task of resource allocation.106
The authors of the report distinguish two basic elements in
academic planning: process and concerns/problems areas. These, in
turn, are fashioned into modules which become the vehicles through
which academic unit data is collected and analyzed. The components
of the process element include: (a) Demands of students, faculty,
other administrators, donors; (b) Function (instruction, research,
public service); (c) Human and physical resources (faculty, finance,
facilities); (d) Outcomes (student growth and development, new
knowledge, community impact); (e) Societal guidelines and constraints;
and (f) Institutional guidelines and constraints.107
In addition to and underlying the above process are the

various concerns/problems areas common to many academic units.

They are: (1) Determination of academic unit functions and activities;

 

105Glenn K. Miyataki and Robert G. Gray, Academic Unit Plannipg
Manual, Field Review Edition, Technical Report No. 72 (Boulder, Colo.:
NCHEMS at WICHE, 1975), p. 2.

1°“ Ibid., p. l.

1°7Ibid., pp. 5-6.

68

(2) Determination of academic demand; (3) Interdepartmental
relationships; (4) Resource availability, assignment, and utilization;

(5) Responding to changes; (6) Outcomes assessment; (7) Development of

plans and budgets; and (8) Administrative coordination.108

From these 13 descriptors are derived five modules designed
to provide necessary data and information that can be used to evaluate
and plan for future realities of academic units. The modules are:

(1) Structures module; (2) Academic demand module; (3) Faculty planning

module; (4) Finance module; and (5) Outcomes module.109

Lastly, a step-by-step series of worksheets are provided in
the manual to facilitate the initial steps toward implementing a
departmental management information system.

To be sure, management information systems have many supporters,
but there are others who are concerned about the misuse of efficiency as
the sole criterion for academic decision-making. Sharples cautions:

This . . . is not an attempt to deny the importance of
analysis for decision-making on efficiency criteria, but

to suggest strongly that it should not be the sole criterion
for selecting an alternative. Concern is expressed for the
evangelistic vigor with which the concept of technical effi-
ciency is being pursued without explicit consideration for
other values or systems. Just as friction within a machine
reduces its mechanical efficiency, so conflict within an
organization will results in a loss of technical efficiency.
Consequently, the selection of an alternative based solely
on efficiency criteria may involve, in the long run, greater
expenditures of human and material resources in order to

 

108 Ibido, Pp. 5-8.

1°9Ibid., pp. 13-142.

69

compensate for the lack of consideration of the effects
of the alternative on the political and social systems
of the organization.11°

Summayy

There is a sizeable literature written on the use of computers
in higher education, but, to date, they are used almost exclusively by
central administration, student records and computerized instruction.

Their use is growing and supporters are quick to point out the
near limitless capabilities not only for central administration but for
every unit of the university.

Though implementation of management information systems is not
as widely spread as some imagine it to be, its merits, as a means of
making decisions more reflective of current and future actualities,
are sung by growing numbers because its users are better able to keep
abreast of human, demographic, curricular, social and technological
needs, demands, changes.

Lastly, the two NCHEMS documents mapped out procedures for
establishing a MIS at the departmental level. Both indicated some of
the answers to the whys, hows and whats for making departments more
efficient and presumably more effective units within the university.
Both provided technical and philosophical background necessary to build

a.MIS for the academic unit.

 

11°Brian Sharples, "Rational Decision-Making in Education: Some
Concerns," Educational Administration Quarterly 11 (Spring 1975): 65.

CHAPTER III

DESIGN OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the research design.
The characteristics of the population, the sampling procedures, the
procedures for securing the data, and a delineation of the data

methodology are presented.

Population

 

The elements under consideration in this study are all

department chairpersons at Michigan State University during the 1975-76
academic year. Directors of schools, institutes and centers are not

considered equivalents.

Sampling Design

 

Since the entire population of department chairpersons at
Michigan State University numbers 89, and to be assured of a large
enough response, all department chairpersons are subjects for this

study.

Instrumentation

 

In order to gather the information necessary to answer the

research questions, it was necessary to prepare a questionnaire that

70

71

would yield a description of: (1) faculty data storage systems used
and preferred by department chairpersons; (2) the frequency with which
selected faculty data are used and would be used across four decisions.
It was also decided useful to request the size of the department.

In accordance with these needs the Department Chairperson's
Information Retrieval Systems and the Use of Presently Available and
Potentially Available Faculty Data Questionnaire consists of two parts:
Part One, Presently Available Faculty Data: Its Retrieval System and
Frequency of Use; Part Two, Potentially Available Faculty Data: Its
Preferred System and Estimated Frequency of Use.

The respondents are requested to indicate the head-count size
of their departments and to include in that number professors, associate
professors, assistant professors, graduate assistants, research
assistants, lecturers, instructors and specialists.

Finally, the respondents are asked to indicate whether or not
they wish to receive the results of this study and/or a selected

bibliography.

Data Collection Procedures

 

Survey Procedures

 

In addition to informing the respondents of the nature of the
study, the cover letter describes the degree of confidentiality. They
are informed that the questionnaire would be used only for this study.

The questionnaires were hand-delivered to each of the respon-

dents or their secretaries on February 25, 26, or 27, 1976. Follow-up

72

telephone calls were conducted between the fourth and sixth week after
delivery of the questionnaire. The data from those responses received
by April 15, 1976 are used in the analysis of the data. Table 1

indicates an overall response of 86.5 percent.

Table 1. Number and Percentage of Response

 

 

 

Possible Number of Percentage

Number of Number of Percentage Useable of Useable

Respondents Responses of Responses Responses Responses
89 77 86.5 47 52.8

 

However, of the 77 responses received, 30 were not useable.
Table 2. indicates the number and reasons for unuseability. There were
a total of 30 unuseable responses: two were too late; three were incom-
plete; three were received with letters which stated their non-
applicability to those departments; three were accompanied with letters
of refusal to participate in the study; 19 indicated by memo or tele-

phone that they either had no time or were too busy.

Treatment of Data

Each of the 17 faculty data items and the four decisions are
given equal weighting. The respondents are asked to indicate on a
scale of 1 to 5 how frequently they used each of the data items when

making each of the four decisions.

73

Table 2. Number and Reason for Unuseable and Non-Responses

 

 

Number of Unuseable

 

Responses Reason Unuseable
2 Too late
3 Incomplete
3 Letter of non-applicability

from department chairperson

3 Letter of refusal
19 No time; too busy
30 Total unuseable responses

 

Processing the Data
Upon completion of the survey, the data was coded and key-
punched on data control cards for statistical treatment by Michigan

State University's CDC 6500 computer.

Statement of Research Questions

Question

1. What system is presently used to store faculty data?
2. What system is preferred to store selected faculty data?

3. How frequently is the selected faculty data used to make
decisions relative to salary, tenure, promotion, and the
selection of new faculty?

4. How frequently would the selected faculty data be used
to make decisions relative to salary, tenure, promotion,
and the selection of new faculty if the preferred
storage system were used?

5. What are the discrepancy scores between the storage system
and the use of presently and potentially available faculty
data across the four decisions of salary, tenure, promotion
and selection of new faculty?

74

Question

6. What relationship exists between the size of the department,
the systems used and preferred to store faculty data?

Analysis of the Data

Storage system analysis includes the total number of department
chairpersons using each of the available systems and the percentages for
both Part One (Presently Available) and Part Two (Potentially Available
or Desired System). It also includes the number and percentages of the
various combinations of the basic three storage systems in use by the
departments.

Means and standard deviations are derived for each of the
17 selected faculty data items as they are used across the four
decisions in Part One, Section Two and Part Two, Section Two of
the questionnaire.

Discrepancy scores are also obtained from Sections Two of
Parts One and Two.

Lastly, department size, the storage system used and desired

are compared.

Summary

This chapter describes the procedures used to fulfill the
objectives of this study. The population is described and reasons
given for-selecting the entire population. The questionnaire and
survey procedures are outlined. Treatment of data is described.
The research questions are restated. Finally, the procedures and

statistics to analyze the data are given.

CHAPTER IV

ANALYSIS OF THE DATA

This study has four primary purposes: to provide descriptive
data regarding the following: (1) currently used faculty data storage
systems; (2) the frequency with which presently available faculty data
is used to make decisions in four categories--salary, tenure, promotion
and selection of new faculty; (3) faculty data storage systems desired
by chairpersons; and (4) the frequency with which the potentially
available faculty data would be used if the desired storage system
were in place. Additionally, there are two secondary purposes: (1) to
determine the difference in the use of faculty data relative to the
particular storage system and (2) to determine the relationship between
the size of the department and the storage system used.

Present and Potential (Desired)
Storage Systems

 

The purpose of research questions 1 and 2 is to determine
(a) the present storage systems and (b) the potential or desired
storage system for faculty data. Table 3 presents present and
potential (desired) storage systems which are divided into seven

distinguishable categories:

75

7(5

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 3. Presently and Potentially Used (Desired) Storage Systems (N -47)
Present Storage System Potential (Desired) Storage System
A S“ A E?
5 3 3 o: 2‘. 3 5 a
8 . t: 3 E a: 8 . t .9 e s
1: u 0 v4 I as I: 'u u o - o: a I:
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O 0 0 O > \ \ m O O 0 O > x \ d
h 0‘! I E z < {I- he a: h a: a E 2 < is {I- m
“. 41‘ b 1 2 1 20 23 1 2
87.2 2.1 4.3 4.3 2.1 42.6 48.9 2.1 4.3 2.1
37 2 2 5 1 20 1 23 2 1
“"“‘“°' 78.7 4.3 4.3 10.6 2.1 42.6 2.1 48.9 4.3 2.1
38 2 2 4 1 19 2 23 2 1
°°""(‘) 80.9 4.3 4.3 8.5 2.1 40.4 4.3 48.9 4.3 2.1
37 l 4 4 1 21 23 2 l
3“" 78.7 2.1 8.5 8.5 2.1 44.7 48.9 4.3 2.1
19 16 1 9 1 1 10 8 24 4 1
’“b1‘°“1°“‘ 40.4 34.0 2.1 19.1 2.1 2.1 21.3 17.0 51.1 8.5 2.1
27 7 9 4 l4 3 26 4
I“‘“‘“‘ 1°“ 57.4 14.9 19.1 8.5 29.8 6.4 55.3 8.5
15 19 2 11 13 10 19 5
3““’°" 31.9 40.4 4.3 23.4 27.7 21.3 40.4 10.6
Student 19 14 3 6 5 14 9 l8 2 4
advisement 40.4 29.8 6.4 12.8 10.6 29.8 19.1 38.3 4.3 8.5
Administrative 24 10 4 3 6 20 6 17 1 3
responsibility 51.1 21.3 8.5 6.4 12.8 42.6 12.8 36.2 2.1 6.4
9 30 l l 5 1 12 10 19 1 4 1
c°“'“1““°“‘ 19.1 63.8 2.1 2.1 10.6 2.1 25.5 21.3 40.4 2.1 8.5 2.1
9 29 1 7 1 11 10 21 4 1
P“”"‘ "rV‘c' 19.1 61.7 2.1 14.9 2.1 23.4 21.3 44.7 8.5 2.1
Off-campus 22 12 2 4 6 1 14 3 25 1 4
teaching 46.8 25.5 4.3 8.5 12.8 2.1 29.8 6.4 53.2 2.1 8.5
Foreign 20 15 2 4 5 1 15 4 22 2 4
tesching 42.6 31.9 4.3 8.5 10.6 2.1 31.9 8.5 46.8 4.3 8.5
01:1 h 4 24 3 12 4 9 8 17 10 3
°' °“" 8.5 51.1 6.4 25.5 8.5 19.1 17.0 36.2 21.3 6.4
20 13 3 1 10 14 6 23 4
°°"“"‘ '°‘“ 42.6 27.7 6.4 2.1 21.3 29.8 12.8 48.9 8.5
2 r ‘lu‘:1 28 8 2 7 1 1 21 3 20 1 1 1
“ " °“ 59.6 17.0 4.3 14.9 2.1 2.1 44.7 6.4 42.6 2.1 2.1 2.1
Student 21 16 4 1 4 1 17 6 21 2 1
evaluation 44.7 34.0 8.5 2.1 8.5 2.1 36.2 12.8 44.7 4.3 2.1
*V"“‘ ““'b“ 22.9 12.9 2.8 2.3 5.4 0.6 0.05 15.5 5.3 21.5 1.1 3.1 0.5 0.0
chairpersons
“V'E‘s‘ P“°“‘ 48.7 27.5 ‘ 6.0 4.9 11.5 1.3 0.1 33.0 11.3 45.7 2.3 6.6 1-1 0-0
chairpersons
.‘rotsl number using Folder (F) to store age information.
t’I’ercsntsgs of chairpersons using Folder (F) to store age information.

77

F Folder;
SR = Self—Report;

'MIS 8 Management Information System;
NA - Not Available;
F/SR - Folder/Self-Report;
F/SR/MIS = Foler/Self-Report and Management Information System; and
SR/MIS - Self-Report and Management Information System.

Present Storage Systems

 

Folder. Table 3 presently and potentially used (desired)
storage systems indicates that a majority of chairpersons use the
Folder to store 13 of the 17 faculty data items. Specifically,

41 or 87.2 percent use the Folder to store age; 37 or 78.7 percent to
store experience and rank; 38 or 80.9 percent to store degree(s); 19 or
40.4 percent to store publications and student advisement; 27 or 57.4
percent to store teaching load; 24 or 51.1 percent to store administra-
tive responsibilities; 22 or 46.8 percent to store off-campus teaching;
20 or 42.6 percent to store foreign teaching and committee work; 28 or
59.6 percent to store peer evaluation; and 21 or 44.7 percent to store
student evaluation.

The number of chairpersons using the Folder to store the
remaining four items are: 15 or 31.9 percent research; 9 or 19.1
percent consultation and public service each; 4 or 8.5 percent office
hours.

The average number of chairpersons using the Folder over

17 faculty data items is 22.9 or 48.7 percent.

78

Self-Report. Self-Report is used by approximately half the
number using the Folder but only 4 of the 17 items are stored in
Self-Report by a majority of chairpersons. Specifically, 19 or 40.4
percent use Self-Report to store research; 30 or 63.8 percent to store
consultation; 29 or 61.7 percent to store public service; and 24 or
51.1 percent to store office hours.

The remaining 13 items stored by chairpersons in Self-Report
are: 16 or 34.0 percent store publications and student evaluation
each; 15 or 31.9 percent store foreign teaching; 14 or 29.8 percent
store student advisement; 13 or 27.7 percent store committee work;
12 or 25.5 percent store off-campus teaching; 10 or 21.3 percent
store administrative responsibilities; 8 or 17.0 percent store peer
evaluation; 7 or 14.9 percent store teaching load; 2 or 4.3 percent
store experience and degree(s) each; 1 or 2.1 percent store age and
rank each.

The average number of chairpersons using Self-Report over

17 faculty data items is 12.9 or 27.5 percent.

Management Information Systems. Management Information

 

Systems (MIS) whether manual or mechanical, are not now being used
by a majority of department chairpersons to store any of the faculty
data items.

The small number of chairpersons using a MIS are: '9 or 19.1
percent to store teaching load; 4 or 8.5 percent to store rank,
administrative responsibilities, and student evaluation each; 3

or 6.4 percent to store student advisement, office hours and committee

79

work each; 2 or 4.3 percent to store age, experience, degree(s),
research, off—campus teaching, foreign teaching, and peer evaluation
each; 1 or 2.1 percent store publications, consultations, and public
service each.

The average number of chairpersons using a Management

Information System over 17 faculty data items is 2.8 or 6.0 percent.

Not Available. A number of chairpersons do not have certain
faculty data items available. They are: 6 or 12.8 percent student
advisement; 3 or 6.4 percent administrative responsibilities; 1 or
2.1 percent consultations, student evaluations and committee work each;
7 or 14.9 percent peer evaluation; 4 or 8.5 percent off-campus teaching
and foreign teaching each; and 12 or 25.5 percent office hours.

The average number of chairpersons who do not have certain

faculty data items available is 2.3 or 4.9 percent.

Folder/Self—Report. Some chairpersons use a combination of

 

Folder/Self-Report to store faculty data items. Specifically, 11

or 23.4 percent use it to store research; 10 or 21.3 percent store
committee work; 9 or 19.1 percent store publications; 6 or 12.8 percent
store administrative responsibilities and off—campus teaching each;

5 or 10.6 percent store experience, student advisement, consultations
and foreign teaching each; 4 or 8.5 percent store degree(s), rank,
teaching load, office hours and student evaluation each; 2 or 4.3
percent store age; 7 or 14.9 percent store public service and l or

2.1 percent store peer evaluation.

80

The average number of chairpersons using this double
combination, Folder/Self-Report, over 17 faculty data items.

is 5.4 or 11.5 percent.

Folder/Self-Report/Management Information System. A
combination of Folder/Self-Report/Management Information System is used
by 1 or 2.1 percent of the chairpersons to store age, experience,
degrees, rank, publications, consultations, public service, off-campus
teaching, foreign teaching, peer evaluation, and student evaluation.

The average number of chairpersons using this triple combination

over 17 faculty data items is 0.6 or 1.3 percent.

Self-Report/Management Information System. Lastly, a combi-

 

nation of Self-Report/Management Information System is used by 1 or
2.1 percent to store publications.
The average number of chairpersons using this combination over

17 faculty data items is 0.05 or 0.1 percent.
Potential Storage Systems

Folder. Table 3 potential (desired) storage system indicates
that a majority of chairpersons would use the Folder to store only
2 of 17 faculty data items. Specifically, 20 or 42.6 percent
would use the Folder to store administrative responsibilities; and
21 or 44.7 percent would store peer evaluation. Of the others, 20
or 42.6 percent would use the Folder to age and experience each; 19

or 40.4 percent would store degree(s); 21 or 44.7 percent would store

81

rank; 17 or 36.2 percent would store student evaluation; 15 or 31.9
percent would store foreign teaching; 14 or 29.8 percent would store
teaching load, student advisement, off-campus teaching and committee
work each; 13 or 27.7 percent would store research; 12 or 25.5 percent
would store consultations; 11 or 23.4 percent would store public ser-
vice; 10 or 21.3 percent would’store publications; and 9 or 19.1
percent would use the Folder to store office hours.

The average number of chairpersons indicating a preference for

the Folder across 17 faculty data items is 15.5 or 33 percent.

Self-Report. Self-Report would not be used to share any

 

of the 17 faculty data items by a majority of chairpersons. Age
and rank would not be used at all by those chairpersons indicating
Self-Report as a preferred storage system.

Of the remaining 15 faculty data items, 1 or 2.1 percent
would use Self-Report to store experience; 2 or 4.3 percent would store
degrees; 3 or 6.4 percent would store teaching load, off-campus teaching
and peer evaluation each; 4 or 8.5 percent would store foreign teaching;
6 or 12.8 percent would store administrative responsibilities, committee
work and student evaluation each; 8 or 17.0 percent would store publi—
cations and office hours each; 9 or 19.1 percent would store student
advisement; and 10 or 21.3 percent would store research, consultations
and public service each.

The average number of chairpersons preferring Self-Report across

17 faculty data items was 5.3 or 11.3 percent.

82

Management Information System. A Management Information System
would be used by approximately one-quarter more than the number who
would use the Folder and four times more than those who would use
Self-Report. A majority of chairpersons indicate they would use a
MIS to store 15 of the 17 faculty data items. Specifically, 23 or
48.9 percent would use a MIS to store each of the following: age,
(experience, degree(s), rank and committee work; 24 or 51.1 percent would
store publications; 26 or 55.3 would store teaching load; 25 or 53.2
percent would store off-campus teaching; 22 or 46.8 percent would store
foreign teaching; 21 or 44.7 percent would store public service and
student evaluation each; 20 or 42.6 percent would store peer evaluation;
19 or 40.4 percent would store research and consultations; 18 or 38.3
percent would store student advisement; 17 or 36.2 percent would store
administrative responsibilities and office hours.

The number of chairpersons preferring a MIS across 17 faculty

data items is 21.5 or 45.7 percent.

Not Available. Several chairpersons would prefer to have

 

certain faculty data items not available. Of those, 1 or 2.1
percent would prefer to have age, administrative responsibilities,
consultations, off-campus teaching and peer evaluation each not
available; 2 or 4.3 percent would prefer to have student advisement
and foreign teaching each not available; and 10 or 21.3 percent would
prefer to have office hours not available.

The average number of chairpersons indicating certain data

that should not be available is 1.1 or 2.3 percent.

83

Folder/Self—Report. A combination of Folder/Self-Report would
not be used by a majority of chairpersons to store any of the 17
faculty data items. However, 2 or 4.3 percent would each use Folder/
Self-Report to store age, experience, degree(s), rank and student
evaluation; 4 or 8.5 percent would each store publications, teaching
load, student advisement, consultations, public service, off-campus
teaching, foreign teaching, and committee work; 5 or 10.6 percent would
store research; 3 or 6.4 percent would each store administrative respon-
sibilities and office hours; and l or 2.1 percent would store peer
evaluation.

The average number of chairpersons preferring this combination

across 17 faculty data items is 3.1 or 6.6 percent.

Folder/Self-Report/Management Information System. A few
chairpersons indicate the Folder/Self-ReportIManagement Information
System would be used by 1 or 2.1 percent to store each of the following:
age, expereince, degree(s), rank, publications, consultations, public
service, peer evaluation and student evaluation.

The average number of chairpersons preferring this triple

combination across 17 faculty data items is 0.5 or 1.1 percent.

Self-Report/Management Information System. Lastly, none of the
respondents indicate a preference for a combination of Self-Report/

Management Information System.

84

A comparison of present storage system and potential (desired)

storage system in Table 4 reveals a substantial desire to shift from

Folders in the present system to a MIS in a preferred system, repre-

sented by a gain of 18.7 chairpersons.

Whereas, there is a decline of

7.4 in Folder useage, 7.6 for Self-Report, 2.3 for Folder/Self-Report,

0.1 for Folder/Self-Report/Management Information System, and 0.05 for

Self-Report/Management Information System.

1.2 for items identified Not Available.

Table 4. Comparison Between Present Storage System and Potential

(Desired) Storage System

There is also a decline of

 

 

Average Number

 

Average Number Preferring the Amount
Using Present Desired Storage of
Storage System Storage System System Change
Self-Report 12.9 5.3 -7.6
Management Information System 2.8 21.5 +18.7
Not Available 2.3 1.1 -1.2
Folder/Self-Report 5.4 3.1 -2.3
Folder/Self-Report/Management
Information System 0.6 0.5 -0.1
Self-Report/Management
Information System 0.05 0.0 -0.05

 

85

Presently Available Faculty Data
and Its Frequency of Use

 

The purpose of research question 3 is to determine how
frequently currently available faculty data are used. The responses
to that question are presented in Table 5 which represents word
equivalences substituted for mean. (See Appendix G for mean and
standard deviation graph.) Also, in this study percentage of faculty
data useage means:

always = 100 percent useage

often = 75 percent useage
sometimes = 50 percent useage
seldom = 25 percent useage
never a 0 percent useage

Table 5 indicates that there are no data items "always" used
for any of the decisions. Publications, research, and peer evaluation
are "often" used across all decisions, and experience and rank are
"often" used to make decisions of tenure, promotion and selection of
new faculty. Teaching load is "often" used for salary and promotion
decisions as is student evaluation for tenure and promotion decisions.
Degree is "often" a consideration in the selection of new faculty.

Public service is the only faculty data item which is "some-
times" a determining data item across all four decisions. Degree,
student advisement, administrative responsibilities and committee work
are "sometimes" a consideration in decisions of salary, tenure and
promotion; student evaluation in decision of salary and selection of
new faculty; teaching load in decisions of tenure and selection of new

faculty; consultations in decisions of tenure and promotion; and rank

86

 

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87

and age in decisions of salary and selection of new faculty,
' respectively.

Faculty data items that are "seldom" considered across all
four decisions are off-campus teaching and foreign teaching. Consul-
tations are "seldom" used in decisions of salary or selection of new
faculty; age "seldom" is used for tenure and promotion decisions; and
student advisement, administrative responsibilities, consultations, or
committee work are "seldom" used for selection of new faculty decisions.

Office hours are "never" consideration for any of the four
decisions and age is "never" used to make salary decisions.

Potentially Available Faculty Data and
Its Estimated Frequency of Use

 

The purpose of research question 4 is to determine how
frequently selected faculty data items would be used if a preferred
data storage system were in place. The responses to that question
are presented in Table 6 which represents the word equivalents sub-
stituted for mean. (See Appendix H for mean and standard deviation
graph.)

Table 6 indicates there are no faculty data items that would
"always" be used for all four decisions. Publications, research, and
peer evaluation would "often" be considerations for the four decisions.
Student evaluation would "often" be used to make salary, tenure and
promotion decisions; experience and rank for decisions of tenure,
promotion and selection of new faculty. Committee work would "often"

be an input for salary and promotion decisions; teaching load,

88

 

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89

administrative responsibilities and public service for salary decisions;
and degree for the selection of new faculty.

Only student advisement would "sometimes" be used across all
four decisions; degree and consultations for salary, tenure, and pro-
motion decisions; while teaching load, administrative responsibilities
and public service would "sometimes" be used to make tenure, promotion
and selection of new faculty decisions. Experience and rank would
"sometimes" be considerations for salary decisions; committee work
for tenure decisions; and age and student evaluations for selection
of new faculty.

Off-campus teaching and foreign teaching would "seldom" be used
to make any of the four decisions; age and office hours "seldom" used
for salary, tenure and promotion decisions. "Seldom" would consulta-
tions and committee work be used to make selection of new faculty
decisions.

Finally, the only faculty data item that would "never" be used
for the selection of new faculty members was office hours.

Discrepancy Scores Between the Use of Presently
Available Faculty Data and Potentially

Available Faculty Data Relative
to Storage Systems

 

 

The purpose of research question 5 is to determine discrepancy
scores between the use of presently and potentially available faculty
data relative to the particular storage system in use or desired. The

discrepancy scores for mean and standard deviation are shown in Table 7.

90

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 7. Discrepancy Scores Between the Use of Presently Available
Faculty Data and Potentially Available Faculty Data
Selection

of New
Salary Tenure Promotion Faculty
A e Mean .426 .340 .298 .128
g s.0.a .994 .962 .805 .711
Experience Mean .149 -.085 -.085 .106
S.D. .416 .545 .408 .375
3 8.0. .806 .707 .604 .588
Rank 8.0. .884 .834 .872 .840
Mean .128 .000 .021 .064
Publicati°ns 8.0. .647 .417 .254 .485
TeaChing 1°ad s.0. .528 .675 .571 .900
R h Mean -.021 -.064 -.021 .021
esearc 3.0. .254 .385 .254 .847
Student Mean .149 .213 .149 .511
advisement S.D. .659 .657 .510 .953
Administrative Mean .106 .149 .106 .404
responsibility S.D. .521 .551 .521 .470
Mean .191 .213 .043 .234
C°nsultati°ns 8.0. .770 .778 .690 .914
Mean .128 .128 .149 .234
P“b11° serV1°e s.0. .494 .647 .510 .729
Off-campus Mean .277 .277 .106 .149
teaching S.D. .772 .902 .634 .780
F i t achin Mean .383 .302 .213 .149
°re 8“ e g 8.0. .795 .845 .587 .884
Mean .596 .574 .426 .340
Office h°urs 3.0. 1.296 1.247 1.247 1.069
C itt k Mean .191 .149 .128 .085
°mm ee w°r 8.0. .613 .751 .536 .830
P 1 1 Mean .213 .043 .064 .064
ear eva “at °n s.0. .883 .884 .704 .870
Student Mean .128 .085 .021 .170
evaluation S.D. .711 .686 .489 .816

 

 

 

 

 

 

8Standard Deviation.

91

However, since the mean did not exceed two times the standard deviation
no importance was given to the differences of scores for any of the 17
faculty data items across the four decisions of salary, tenure, promo—
tion and selection of new faculty in the present storage system and the
potential (desired) storage system. That is, the use of the data items
is not predicted on the particular form of storage and retrieval.

Table 8 is a comparative table between the use of the faculty
data in the present storage system and the potential (desired) storage

system. It is a simple summation of previous explanation given for

Tables 5 and 6.

Department Size Relative to Present and
Potential (Desired) Storage Systems

The purpose of research question 6 is to determine the
relationship between departmental faculty data storage systems and
department size. Table 9 presents the use of 17 faculty data items
and six data storage systems as used in small (1 to 20 members), medium
(21 to 60 members) and large (61 and over members) departments.

In the present storage system small, medium and large depart-
ments favor the Folder. .In a potential (desired) system both small and
large departments maintain their diminishing preference for the Folder
by a slight margin, whereas, medium sized departments indicate a clear
preference for a Management Information System. However, it is useful
to remember that for this study there are 10 small departments, 27

medium departments and 10 large departments.

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93

Specifically, in the present system across 17 faculty data
items, small departments (1—20) use the Folder 73 times or 42.9 percent;
Self-Report, 56 times or 32.9 percent; Management Information System, 6
times or 3.6 percent; and Folder/Self-Report, 26 times or 15.3 percent.
Two combinations, Folder/Self-Report/Management Information System and
Self-Report/Management Information System, are not used by small depart-
ments. They also indicate 9 times or 5.3 percent that certain items are
Not Available.

Medium departments (21-61) use the Folder 233 times or 50.8
percent; Self-Report, 132 times or 28.8 percent; Management Information
System, 21 times or 4.6 percent; Folder/Self-Report, 43 times or 9.4
percent; Folder/Self—Report/Management Information System, 11 times or
2.3 percent; and Self-Report/Management Information System, 1 time or
0.2 percent. They indicate that certain items are Not Available 18
times or 3.9 percent.

Large departments (61 and over) use the Folder 84 times or
49.4 percent; Self-Report, 31 times or 18.2 percent; Management Infor-
mation System, 20 times or 11.8 percent; and Folder/Self-Report, 23
times or 13.5 percent. Two combinations of Folder/Self-Report/Manage-
ment Information System and Self-Report/Management Information System
are not used by large departments. They also indicate that 12 times
or 7.1 percent certain items are Not Available.

In a potential (preferred) system, Table 9 reveals that small
departments would prefer the Folder 61 times or 35.8 percent; Self-

Report, 26 times or 15.3 percent; Management Information System, 58

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95

times or 34.1 percent; and Folder/Self-Report, 21 times or 12.4 percent.
Folder/Self-Report/ Management Information System and Self-Report/Man-
agement Information System would not be used by small departments.

Four times or 2.4 percent they indicate certain items would not be
available.

Medium departments would prefer the Folder 132 times or 28.8
percent; Self-Report, 52 times or 11.4 percent; Management Information
System, 245 times or 53.4 percent; Folder/Self-Report, 12 times or 2.6
percent; and Folder/Self-Report/Management Information System, 9 times
or 1.9 percent. Self—Report/Management Information System would not be
used by medium departments. Nine times or 1.9 percent they indicate
that certain items would not be available.

Large departments would use the Folder 71 times or 41.7 percent;
Self-Report, 11 times or 6.5 percent; Management Information System, 61
times or 35.9 percent; and Folder/Self-Report, 21 times or 12.4 percent.
Folder/Self-Report and Self-Report/Management Information System would
not be used by large departments. Six times or 3.5 percent they
indicate that certain items would not be available.

The summary totals, Table 9, for those using or who would use
the Folder, show that small department users decline by 7.1 percent,
medium by 22 percent and large by 7.7 percent; Self-Report shows that
small department users decline by 17.6 percent, medium department users
by 17.4 percent and large department users by 11.7 percent; Management
Information System shows that small department users increase by 30.5

percent, medium by 48.8 percent and large by 24.1 percent.

96

Relative to faculty data items Not Available, there is a
decline of 2.9 percent in small departments, 2.0 percent in medium
departments and 3.6 percent in large departments.

For chairpersons using or who would use the Folder/Self-Report,
small department users decline by 2.9 percent, medium by 6.8 percent
and large by 1.1 percent; Folder/Self-Report/Management Information
System combination shows no users among small and large departments
and a decline of 0.4 percent in medium departments; Self-Report/Man-
agement Information System reveals no users among small and large
departments and a decline of 0.2 percent in medium departments.

A more detailed accounting of department useage by size

for each of the 17 faculty data items can be found in Appendix 1.

Summary

This chapter presents data relative to the types of currently
used and preferred storage systems; the frequency with which 17 faculty
data items are presently used over four decisions, as well as how
frequently they would be used in a preferred storage system; the
discrepancy scores between the present and potential (desired) storage
system relative to the four decisions; and the relationship between
size of department and the use made of a particular faculty data
storage system over 17 faculty data items.

In Chapter V, a summary of the study, the findings and con-

clusions are set forth along with implications for further research.

CHAPTER V

SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

In this chapter a summary of the purposes, literature, and
research design are presented first. Findings generated by the analysis
of the data are set forth followed by implications for departmental

chairpersons and further research.

Summary

Purpose of the Study

 

With the growing complexity of the department chairperson's
position, there is need to research and evaluate other administrative
alternatives. For example, to demonstrate the volume and variety of
the position's responsibilities, chairpersons in many college and
universities are expected to be scholars and at the same time to
make informed, responsible decisions relative to: budget; selection,
retentions and promotion of academic staff; salaries; sabbatical leaves;
interdepartmental relations; research grants; program development and
innovation; university committees; professional growth; advice to the
dean; representing the administration to faculty and faculty to the
administration; new faculty orientation; departmental meetings; non-
academic help; student.advising; class scheduling; faculty load;

graduate student applications; grading; and curricular changes.

97

98

In addition, they are beset by pressures from unions on the one
hand and an increasingly demanding public on the other.

Consequently, sophisticated and complex decisions are required
of them as well as an increased demand for technical reports from deans
and central administrators.

However, it should be noted that the current problems of
chairpersons are not entirely new. During the nineteenth century
departments in some colleges had already been established, others were
well on their way. At that time, their development was due to a combi-
nation of factors including: the demise of the classical curriculum,
the proliferation of knowledge, vocational specialties, a demand for
alternative programs, graduate study, and the new Ph.D. degree.

Today, several of the same causes of departmental complexity
still exist. That is, knowledge continues to accelerate which in turn
supports greater specialization; second, the demand for alternative
programs to meet the exigencies of the job market; third, the devel-
opment of non-traditional Ph.D. programs.

5 The major purpose of this study, then, is to respond, in part,
to the need to research and evaluate the position of department chair-
person in order to design alternatives capable of modifying or replacing
existing management practices.

Specifically, this study is to identify faculty data
storage and retrieval systems, currently used and preferred, and how
they relate to the decisiondmaking process relative to four specified

areas. Implicit in this study is the need to begin the process of

99

evaluating management techniques that would preserve or restore the
historically perceived responsibilities of the chairperson, namely,
academic leadership, faculty and student development, and program

evaluation.

Review of the Literature
Two major areas related to the purpose of this study are
selectively reviewed. They are: The Department and the Department
Chairperson, and Management Information Systems and University Depart-
ments. The dominant findings, impressions, and sometimes contradictory
opinions include:
I. The Department and the Department Chairperson
A. Current Positive Interpretations of the Position
1. By definition the chairperson has a "special obligation
to build a department . . . in scholarship, teaching,
capacity and public service."1
2. The chairperson is the vital link in the department with
the university.
3. The position is too important to entrust into the hands
of a rotating chairperson.

4. Chairpersons are caught in—between the administration and

the faculty.

 

1Bylaws for Academic Governance, Michigan State University,

 

1975.

10.

100

Departments with good administration have chairpersons
who take the initiative by solving old problems with new
solutions.

Selection of new faculty is one of the chairpersons most
critical responsibilities.

The chairperson provides orientation for new faculty,
in—service, and develOps long-range goals.

The chairperson's most critical responsibility is
curriculum development.

The chairperson does have authority as attested to by
his/her control over personnel decisions and policies.
The more powerful chairpersons lead departments where

satisfaction and productivity are relatively higher.

B. Current Negative Interpretations of the Position

1.

Chairpersons are unable to effectively evaluate their
faculty because of (a) grievance procedures or (b) the
"professional syndrome" which suggests that no one can

tell a professional how to do his/her job except another
professional.

Chairpersons neither understand nor skillfully use power.
Part-time chairpersons are ineffective and counterproductive.
Chairpersons are generally ill-prepared and inadequately
supported.

They lack requisite skills for bringing about educational

advance through the typical university structure.

101

An absence of research and literature characterizes the
present state of the art.

Chairpersons fail to make long-range plans and have little
control over the budget.

Departments are wagged by specialization, more money, and
faster promotions.

Chairpersons experience the greatest conflict when making
decisions of salary, promotion, tenure, hiring new faculty,

budget and faculty time allocation, in that order.

II. Management Information Systems and University Departments

l.

Chairpersons make many decisions and need data on which to
make them. Often they do not view their efforts as delib-
erate collection and analysis of data. They talk to people
and gather impressions and ideas and then make a decision
acting, as it were intuitively, basing these decisions on
humanistic values and goals. They seem to believe that
any more precise information will have limited value.

Data in itself is not valuable-—how it will be used is

the key.

Management Information Systems should not be rejected as
insensitive tools until they have been thoroughly
investigated.

New managerial techniques must be developed so that
institutions of higher education do not end up with many

students, high expenditures, a multitude of facilities but

10.

11.

102

be able to provide only a small fraction of the higher
education needed.

Though management information systems are popular only
about 13 percent of some 1,400 institutions in one study
have them in place.

The major criterion of organizational effectiveness is its
ability to cope with change.

Because of the increased demand for data, it appears that
only a management information system is capable of producing
the required amount of accurate data.

The real issues to be remembered when establishing an
information system include: providing parity and equity
in promotion, salary, tenure and employment decisions;
providing the greatest educational return to students for
their money.

It is possible for good management based on a management
information system to contribute to the solution of 'value'
issues.

The faculty continues to be the principal stumbling block
to implementing a departmental information system.

What delays the use of departmental information systems are:
lack of goals and objectives; inadequate role definition of

chairpersons; and the threat of too much autonomy.

103

Design of the Study

In order to gather data relative to the departmental information
storage systems, it was necessary to construct an information gathering
instrument in the form of a questionnaire (see Appendix F).

All department chairpersons at Michigan State University are
the subjects used for the study. Of the total 89 chairpersons, 77
replied for a response rate of 86.5 percent. Thirty responses were
not useable and therefore data for 47 department chairpersons, or
52.8 percent are analyzed.

Sample totals, averages, means and standard deviations are

the tools used to analyze the data.

Findings of the Study
Results of analyses performed on the data relative to the
intent of the research questions are summarized below.
A. Present Storage System Summary

1. The Folder is identified as the present and most commonly
used storage system for storing faculty data.

2. There are no faculty data items which are "always" used
across all four decisions of salary, promotion, tenure and
selection of new faculty decisions. However, publications,
research, and peer evaluation are "often" used across the
four decisions. Public service is "sometimes" considered
for all four decisions, while off-campus and foreign
teaching is "seldom" used, and office hours are "never"

used to make any of the four decisions.

B.

104

Preferred (Desired) Storage System Summary

1.

A Management Information System is indicated as the
preferred (desired) faculty data storage system.

If a preferred storage system were in place, not one

of the faculty data items would "always" be used for
all four decisions. Publications, research, and peer
evaluation remain as items that would "often" be used
across the four decisions. Student advisement would
"sometimes" be used and off—campus and foreign teaching

would "seldom" be used in the decision-making process.

Discrepancy Scores

1.

The discrepancy scores between the use of faculty data
items relative to the present and preferred storage systems
are judged to be unimportant since the mean scores did not

exceed two times the standard deviation scores.

Department Size

1.

The data reveals no substantial difference between small,
medium and large departments and their use of storage
systems. All make substantial use of the Folder. However,
with a preferred system in place, medium sized departments
indicate a two to one preference for a Management Informa-
tion System, while small and large departments maintain a

diminishing preference for the Folder.

105

Conclusions

 

Based on the findings of this study and in reference to the

population of interest, the following conclusions are offered:

1. While the most commonly used faculty data storage system
is the Folder, a respectable number of chairpersons
indicate a clear preference for a Management Information
System.

2. The use of faculty data appears to be unrelated to the
storage system from which it is retrieved as attested to
by the low discrepancy scores between the use of present
and preferred storage systems.

3. Department size appears to be of some importance since
medium sized departments in a preferred storage system
overwhelmingly chose a Management Information Systemrwhile
the small and large department chairpersons indicate a

declining preference for the Folder.
Implications for Departmental Chairpersons

There is certainly little doubt that the task of the department
chairperson is growing more complex not less; that the publics to which
he/she is answerable are becoming more visible and more demanding; that
the chairperson is required to make more decisions about many more and
diverse issues which require specialized information; lastly, that the

number of inter- and intra-institutional offices exacting information

106

and reports continues to swell, thereby absorbing a lion's share of
time. Yet, the chairperson's administrative support system appears
not to be keeping pace with the ballooning demand for data.

Many alternatives and suggestions will eventually have to be
considered because of their impact on departmental information. They
include:

1. Roles, functions and responsibilities should be more precisely
spelled out.
2. More research on the role of chairperson must be done to insure
adequate training for new generations of chairpersons.
3. The faculty must assume a studied and reasonable share of
departmental decision making.
4. Chairpersons where necessary must reacquaint themselves with
the difference between schooling and education.
5. They must restudy the direct relationship between curriculum
development and policy making.
6. They must make decisions based on theory and current data.
7. A more flexible system for entering into and passing out of
administration must be devised.
8. The successful chairperson is well advised to study the
nature and use of power and authority.
9. The chairperson must be reasonably visible and accessible.
10. In recruiting faculty, the applicant must be matched to the
job and only honest evaluations made of his/her performance

during the probation period.

ll.

12.

13.

14.

15.

l6.

17.

107

The department cannot be all things to all people and

therefore must determine courses it will not teach, faculty

it will not hire, research is will not do and students it will

not admit.

Academic freedom must not be used to cloak incompetence and

negligence.

The chairperson must think in larger educational units and each

department as a contributing member.

There must be increased educational and financial support for

the creation, care and continuous feeding of administrators to

attract and retain qualified chairpersons who are expected to

assume the varied, complex, and sophisticated duties of the

position.

Chairpersons must strive to achieve parity and equity in

promotions, salary, tenure decisions and general employment

practices.

Chairpersons must seek more effective ways of providing for

more educational return per dollars spent for students.

There is a clear need to store departmental data in a form

that will expedite departmental decision-making as well as

the writing of inter- and intra-institutional reports. Central

administrators should be careful to exact from higher education's

middle managers only data relevant to both the department and

the institution. This may require re-evaluation of needs by

both central administration and chairpersons.

Second, each may

18.

19.

20.

21.

108

be required to listen and speak more directly to the needs

of the other to avoid protagonist/antagonist relationships.
Departmental chairpersons must be academic leaders and must
also want to be managers. If the dual role becomes untenable
then it must either be divided into two positions requiring
an assistant chairperson, or surrendered to another who is
capable and amenable to the task.

The position should be adequately rewarded by upper eschelon
administrators with special considerations given to finance,
prestige and real power.

Chairpersons will have to require themselves to be active

and aggressive academic leaders, long-range programmers and
meticulous recruiters and evaluators of faculty so that these
critical responsibilities do not pass to governmental or
business bureaucrats by default.

Departmental long-range planning is critical to the university
department to assume its historically perceived tasks of
dispensing information and pushing back the frontiers of
knowledge. These plans must include several years and be
bold enough to accommodate as well as to create change but

flexible enough to respond to the unforeseen.

complex
improve
further

1.

109

Implications for Further Research

The position of chairperson requires that those who share its
responsibilities be prepared with current research designed to
their skills as managers and academic leaders. Therefore,
research should include:

replicating this study at four-year colleges and universities
which would broaden the data base and provide institutional
and/or departmental planners with solid data impetus to begin
preparation for installing a Management Information System.
providing Michigan State University department chairpersons
who have expressed interest in a Management Information System

with materials contained in WICHE's The Academic Unit Planning

 

Manual, Field Review Edition, Technical Report 72. This would
begin the process implementing problem-solving solutions to
departmental information demands. It would, in effect, serve
several purposes: to force refinements in WICHE'S instrument,
but primarily it would serve as the foundation on which to build
university involvement in the process of (a) providing depart-
ment chairpersons with alternatives to storage, retrieval and
use of data; (b) possibly reduce the protagonist/antagonist
relationship that develops between central administration and
department chairpersons; and (c) possibly secure more time for
chairpersons to evaluate faculty and programs as well as plan

for the future.

3.

110

a time-motion study undertaken at selected universities to
gather data relative to chairpersons' use of time. This

study could contribute significantly to the revision of
WICHE'S Technical Report 72. It would demonstrate individual
institution time-motion characteristics as well as whole group
tendencies. A modified instrument similar to that used by

Dressel et al. in The Confidence Crises would be adequate

 

to the need.

a fourth research project to examine opinions of ex-
chairpersons, preferably those removed from office 10 years
or less, to determine: (a) viable chairperson selection pro-
cedures; (b) effective decision—making procedures; (c) the
adequacies and inadequacies of existing departmental data
storage, retrieval and useage systems; (d) the proper role
of chairpersons as curriculum evaluators, developers and
planners; and (e) the effectiveness of faculty evaluation
procedures, the inhibitors of effective faculty evaluation
and effective alternatives for faculty evaluation.

any one of the 21 items, or combinations thereof, included

in Implications for Departmental Chairpersons in order to

 

assure enlightened faculty and departmental leadership by

persons adequately trained and rewarded.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

UNPUBLISHED MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT CHAIRPERSON JOB DESCRIPTION

APPENDIX A

UNPUBLISHED MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

DEPARTMENT CHAIRPERSON JOB DESCRIPTION

Duties, Satisfactions, and Goals for the Academic Role

A.

Academic duties

Student activities
Teaching own students
Advising students on academic and/or departmental matters

Graduate/Research activities

Supervising and developing of graduate teaching and
research assistants

Recruiting and selecting graduate students

Obtaining and managing grants, gifts, and contracts

Encouraging faculty research and publication

Obtaining employment or acceptance in graduate school
for students

Academic opportunities

Be involved in research

Maintain currency in selected professional fields

Have sufficient time for outside activities and interests
Avoiding extraneous conflicts

Academic goals

Student
Graduating a well-versed student with a balanced education
Educating the student for a future career

Graduate/Research
Producing new knowledge through research
Developing and/or maintaining an outstanding departmental
graduate program

111

112

Measures of Duties, Satisfactions and Goals for the Administrative Role

 

A.

Administrative tasks

Administration: Liaison

Interacting with the administration in behalf of the
department

Representing the department in the appropriate professional
meetings and societies

Planning and holding departmental meetings

Providing for the flow of_information to the faculty to
inform them of department, college, and university
activities and plans

Participating in committee work within the college and
university

Assigning courses, research, and departmental duties to
faculty

Coordinating activities with outside groups

Administration: Internal
Managing of the clerical and technical staff
Preparing and presenting of proposed budgets
Administering the departmental budget and other financial
resources
Managing physical facilities and equipment
Assuring the maintenance of accurate student records

Administrative opportunities

Interact with others in the institution, outside of the
department

Receive recognition for efforts

Develop lasting friendships

Concentrate efforts in desired areas

Administrative goals

Administrative/Service

Developing an efficient organization through use of
appropriate managerial decisions

Providing a direct service to other organizations in
the university, community and state

Maintaining the goals and requirements of the central
administration (e.g., enrollment grants, budget,
development)

113

Measures of Duties, Satisfaction, and Goals of the Leadership Role

 

A.

Leadership tasks

Academic personnel

Encouraging the professional development of faculty
members within the department

Providing informal faculty leadership

Recruiting and selecting faculty

Evaluating faculty performance to determine tenure,
raises, and promotions

Encouraging faculty research and publication

Maintaining morale and reducing conflicts

Program development
Developing and initiating long-range programs, plans,
and goals for the department
Planning and reviewing the curriculum, academic programs,
and course content
Listening to and encouraging ideas to improve the
department

Leadership opportunities

Guiding

Guide program development

Have autonomy in decision-making

Guide departmental growth

Influencing
Have a varied and challenging job
Develop the potential of students and junior faculty
Influence your profession and higher education in general

Leadership goals

Development
Improving the quality of the department relative to peer
departments at other colleges/universities and within
this institution
Encouraging the personal and professional development of
the individual faculty members

Faculty
Providing the faculty and staff with a congenial place
in which to work
Maintaining a spirit of inquiry and academic freedom

APPENDIX B

HARRISBURG (PA) AREA COMMUNITY COLLEGE

DEPARTMENT CHAIRPERSON JOB DESCRIPTION

APPENDIX B

HARRISBURG (PA) AREA COMMUNITY COLLEGE

DEPARTMENT CHAIRPERSON JOB DESCRIPTION

Reporting to the heads of each of the three service branches of
the College (Instructional Services, Student Personnel Service, and
Administrative Services) the Division Chairman administers the programs
of his division, leads the faculty of the division and shares in the
general administrative duties of the institution. His responsibilities,
to the institution as a whole and through the three branches of the
College, are as follows:

1. General Responsibilities

a.

In May of each year, prepare an annual report of the
activities of his division, for use by the President
and other administrative officers of the College.

Represent his division in relationship to the community
and in rendering service to the community.

Represent his division in relationship to other divisions
within the College and in relationship with other colleges.

Arrange with the College bookstore for the availability of
those texts, reference books, and general supplies needed
for courses in his division.

Maintain official records of the work of his division and
of those college-wide developments that are of concern to
his division.

Maintain the security of confidential matters entrusted to
the division, including standardized tests, locally prepared
tests and examinations, etc.

Prepare, review, and revise materials for the College Catalog
related to his division.

114

I

115

2. Responsibilities for Instructional Services

a.

Responsibility for Faculty

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

Initiate action for recruitment of faculty

a) Search

b) Review credentials

c) Check credentials

d) Interview applicants

e) Make recommendations to Dean of Instruction

Share responsibility for orientation of new faculty

a) To the institution
b) To colleagues

c) To administration
d) To community

Supervise evaluation of divisional faculty

a) Salary
b) Promotion
c) Tenure
d) Dismissal

Assign teaching load and other responsibilities
related to instruction

\

Assist and support divisional faculty through
counseling and professional advice

Through the Division Counselor, assign responsibility
for student advisees and academic counseling (see 3,a)

Encourage the professional growth of divisional faculty
a) Through professional society membership

b) Through travel
c) Through additional formal study

Responsibility for Programs and Courses

1)

2)

Supervise the design and maintenance of instructional
programs and courses within that part of the curriculum
to which his division is assigned.

Recommend library purchases of books, periodicals,
and other study materials related to the curriculum
of his division.

C.

3)

116

Prepare schedules for courses and sections within
his division.

4) Prepare schedules for instructional spaces that may
be assigned to his division.

5) Assign faculty responsibilities for programs, subjects,
and courses.

6) Recommend to the Dean of Instruction persons to be
asked to serve on curricular advisory committees.

7) Prepare prOposals for Special projects related to
the instructional program of his division (see 4,g).

Teaching

1) Develop and maintain teaching and grading standards
and a common understanding of these standards within
his division.

2) Encourage the appropriate and effective use of all
media for instructional purposes within his division.

3) Encourage responsible innovation and controlled

experimentation in instructional methods within
his division.

3. Responsibilities for Student Personnel Services

a.

b.

Through the Division Counselor, assign responsibility
for student advisees and academic counseling (see 2,a,6).

Take an active part in the recruitment of students for the
College and for the specific programs and courses assigned
to the division.

1)

2)

3)

4)

Provide information to prospective students directly
and indirectly by word of mouth.

Prepare copy for brochures and other printed materials
within the general administrative plans and policies
for recruitment of students.

Assist students and graduates in finding appropriate
employment related to their program of studies.

Share with the Director of Counseling Services in the
supervision of counselors assigned to the division.

C.

5)

117

Coordinate the scheduling of students for courses and
programs within the division, and for divisional
advisees in all courses.

Responsibilities for Advising and Counseling

1)

2)

3)

Advising and Counseling

a)
b)
e)

d)
e)
f)

Provide advising and counseling service

Provide for scheduling courses for new students
Keep divisional faculty informed about registration
procedures, etc.

Interpret students to faculty

Help to evaluate division counselors

Help to establish course placement and admission
criteria

Record Keeping

a)
b)
e)
d)

Report grades and grade changes

Certify for graduation

Handle change of roster forms

Cooperate in academic registration of students

Recruiting and Placement

a)
b)

e)
d)

Visit high schools and business to meet with
appropriate personnel

Hold orientation sessions on campus for prospective
students

Conduct follow-up

Meet with professional groups

4. Responsibilities for Administrative Services

a.

b.

C.

Assign, supervise, and evaluate clerical personnel and
student help within the division, in accordance with
established board College policy.

1)
2)
3)
4)
5)

Salary

Promotion

Working schedule
Dismissal

Professional development

Initiate divisional budget requests.

Administer approved budget, including expenditures for
professional travel, within his division.

118

Prepare requisitions for supplies and equipment.
Maintain inventory of equipment assigned to his division.
Prepare reports related to absence of personnel:

1) Vacation

2) Emergency leave

3) Sick leave

4) Payment of substitutes
S) Work-related accidents

Initiate action for securing funds for special projects
related to the work of his division (see 2,b,7).

 

APPENDIX C

REASONS FOR DEPARTMENTAL

CHAIRPERSON RESIGNATION

APPENDIX C

REASONS FOR DEPARTMENTAL CHAIRPERSON RESIGNATION

An unwillingness to bear the burden of responsibility for the
development and success of the department's program.

A dislike of the administrative details and clerical tasks
associated with the position.

The greater degree of freedom and personal time associated

with a full-time teaching assignment; for instance, a full-time
teaching assignment provides more opportunity for earning
additional income through consulting, writing, and other
off-campus activities.

The lack of an administrative frame of reference. College
faculty are educated as teachers and scholars with a strong
commitment to their discipline. Thus a departmental chairman
often experiences role conflict. He finds the administrative
tasks and leadership responsibilities of the chairmanship to
be out of harmony and incompatible with his basic values,
self-concept, and academic commitments.

The low status that administration has on campus relative
to teaching, research, and scholarship.

The frustrations associated with the administration of a
department through existing personnel procedures. For example,
judgments of departmental and college committees regarding
faculty tenure and promotion may conflict with and outweigh
the judgments of the departmental chairman.

The lack of administrative time and assistance to handle the
position in accordance with the expectations of the chairman
himself and of the departmental staff.

Heavy administrative responsibility without commensurate
authority in the decision-making process.

The belief that there is no future in college administration.
The future for a college teacher measured by all standards--
promotion, professional status, awards, professional autonomy,
research grants, working conditions, and salary depends
largely on research and scholarship.

119

120

No doubt a resignation from the position of departmental
chairman usually involves a combination of several of these factors.
Also a departmental chairman may resign for other reasons, such as
poor health or the opportunity to embark on a worthy research project.
And in some cases, the departmental chairman may feel a sincere sense
of accomplishment in having mounted a sound departmental program and
may rationally conclude that it is in the best interest of the

department for him to step aside to give someone else a chance.1

 

1Heimler, pp. 201-202.

 

APPENDIX D

NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS SPECIALIZING IN THE

USE OF COMPUTERS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

APPENDIX D

NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS SPECIALIZING IN THE

USE OF COMPUTERS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATIONAL DATA SYSTEMS (AEDS). 1201 Sixteenth Street,

COLLEGE

COLLEGE

NW, Washington, D.C. 20036. This association consists of pro-
fessional educational applications of computers. It sponsors
annual meetings and publishes a journal and occasional special
reports.

AND UNIVERSITY MACHINE RECORDS CONFERENCE (CUMREC). F. B.
Martin, President, 42 Hannah Administration Building,

Michigan State University, East Lansing, Mich. 48823. This
annual conference is devoted primarily to administrative
applications and the problems of administrative data processing
management.

AND UNIVERSITY SYSTEMS EXCHANGE (CAUSE). 737 29th Street,
Boulder, Colo. 80302. An institution devoted to exchange

of information about administrative systems, it sponsors
educational seminars and conferences and encourages small
groups with special interests to develop within the orga-
nization. It also maintains a systems index, which includes
information on administrative systems that can be acquired
from the colleges where they were developed.

INTERUNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS COUNCIL (EDUCOM). Box 364, Princeton,

WESTERN

N.J. 08540. Consisting of institutional rather than individual
membership, this organization was formed to encourage inter-
institutional cooperation in the development and use of
computing. It sponsors two meetings a year and publishes.

INTERSTATE COMMISSION ON HIGHER EDUCATION (WICHE). P.O.
Drawer P, Boulder, Colo. 80302. The Program of the National
Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) at
WICHE is intended to design, develop, and encourage the imple-
mentation of management information systems and data bases to
encourage better institutional management, more exchange of
information, and to facilitate reporting of comparable infor-
mation. It publishes numerous reports and papers and has
produced several computer-based systems that are available.

121

APPENDIX E

FEATHERSTONE'S SUGGESTED PROCEDURE FOR DMS

DEVELOPMENT AND POSSIBLE DMS CONCEPT

APPENDIX E

FEATHERSTONE'S SUGGESTED PROCEDURE FOR DMS

DEVELOPMENT AND POSSIBLE DMS CONCEPT

The following, in outline form, is a suggested procedure for developing
the DMS project.

Derive a set of assumptions from the paper.

Review the literature of a technical nature. (Include current
NCHEMS tool development.)

Develop a working hypothesis from the assumptions and information
derived in steps 1 and 2.

Evolve a design (design team) concept from the hypothesis.1

Test steps one, two, and three and evolve a design through task
force comment.

Complete design of tools.

Test tools through actual application in selected departments.

Possible DMS Concept

 

By following steps one, three, and four in the preceding suggested
procedure, the author evolved a "straWHman" DMS concept. The results
of steps one, three, and four are given after this listing:

1.
2.
3.

Assumptions derived from paper.

Working hypothesis evolved from assumptions.

A concept evolved from the hypothesis, with a written description
of the elements of the concept and a visual presentation of the
concept.

Assumptions

 

The assumptions are presented in categories and in order from minor to
major in importance within the category. However, one assumption is
paramount: the department is a subsystem of the institution it serves
and as such must relate its goals and objectives to institutional goals
and objectives.

 

1So many of the past and current NCHEMS materials are applicable

(some with modifications) to the DMS that the usual NCHEMS developmental
procedure may be shortened.

122

123

Why DMS Is Needed

Management tasks below the level of the school will be performed
by some person (or group) regardless of the size of institution.
The development of adversary roles for faculty and management
(maybe student-faculty-management) will increase the need for
management system development.

DMS becomes more important as social/political communication
demands on the institution increase.

DMS may help reduce internal university business-academic
conflict.

DMS should be developed in order to provide more efficient,
economical, and humane educational environments for the users,
producers, and managers of higher education.

Decision Making,

Decision making at the department level may be accomplished through
individuals or groups and may be the result of:

kwNH
0..

Emotion (excludes systems).

Referral to policy.

Referral to policy and advice of faculty.
Consensus of faculty.

Management Tools

 

The management tool requirements of a department chairman
and a department head are essentially the same.

The management tool requirements of a chairman in a two-year
or a four-year institution are essentially the same.

The DMS tools should be applicable to all types (disciplines)
of departments.

The DMS tools should meet the needs of all sizes (number of
faculty) of departments.

The tool design should recognize the faculty member as a
decision maker with responsibility for management of grants.
The tools must be simple enough to be used by short-term
department managers.

Philosophical

 

DMS as a service concept is more palatable, hence more likely
to succeed, than DMS as a control concept.

Students, faculty, department, and university goals and
objectives are related and may be evolved through negotiation.
Departments are the heart and soul of program development and
all department functions should relate to program. Thus, the
model should be program-based.

124

WorkingiHypothesis

The DMS project should represent the department as a microcosm of the
larger institutional system. Therefore, some of the NCHEMS tools
designed to serve the executive level of management functions may be
used (or modified for use) to aid in management of the department.
Further, the major differences from the executive level in tool design
and use will be related to the degree of disaggregation of data and the
need for rapid retrieval of data in different mixes to meet operational
functions. Moreover, regardless of the processes and personalities
involved in decision making, accurate data will be a basic element of
rational department management. If rationality is an important factor
in management of the department, some method of valuing the activities
of the department will be important. Therefore, the DMS must have:

1. A data base from which accurate, detailed data in different
mixes may be rapidly retrieved. (If faculty and students are
to be used as data suppliers, there should be some type of
recognizable reward identified for faculty and students.)

2. An operational (routine decision) capacity.

3. A planning (dynamic decision) capacity.

4. An evaluative capacity.

Possible DMS Concept
The data base is composed of six components. These elements include:
student, program, academic staff, nonacademic staff, budget, and
facilities.
Data are needed for each element as follows:
Student Component

Data about the student in three time periods:

1. Prior to admission;

2. During degree work;

3. After graduation.

These data include (but are not restricted to) those data elements
found in NCHEMS: Data Element Dictionary-—Student.

 

Program Component

 

Data about courses, internships, externships, independent study, etc.,
that make up the components of the program.

These data include (but are not restricted to) those data elements
found in NCHEMS: Data Element Dictionaryr-Course.

 

125

Academic Staff Component
Data about the faculty members in three periods:
1. Prior to employment;
2. During employment;

3. At retirement.

These data include (but are not restricted to) data elements in
NCHEMS: Data Element Dictionary--Faculty.

Nonacademic Staff Component

Data about the nonacademic staff, including temporary employees and
paraprofessionals, in two time periods:

1. Prior to employment;
2. During employment.

These data include data elements similar to those in NCHEMS: Data
Element Dictionaryj-Faculty.

 

Budget Component

Data about finance in three time periods and in two modes (PPBS and
traditional accounting):

1. Past budget;
2. Present budget (expenditures-encumbrances-balance);
3. Proposed budget:

a. short term (1—2 years)

b. long term (2-5 years).

These data include most but not all elements found in NCHEMS: Data
Element Dictionary-—Finance.

 

Facilities Component

 

Data about space needs: related to program in future (short- and
long-range) time periods. Space allotment is often a centralized
responsibility outside department control. Emphasis here should be
placed on space needs.

These data include those found in NCHEMS: Data Element Dictionary--
Facilities.

 

Data from all six sources, representing different time periods and
component mixes, will provide the basis for operational functions
(routine decisions) and planning functions (dynamic decisions). From
these data, information may be derived for the department level manage-
ment functions if appropriate analytical tools are developed.

126

The tools should be evolved to serve the operational, planning, and
evaluative functions relating to department management.

The operational functions require demand data for routine decisions,
and the tools should be designed for accuracy and speed of retrieval.
The NCHEMS Faculty Activity Analysis is likely to be an important tool
in the operational and planning mode of the department.

The planning functions are based on department activities and objectives
and relate to short-range (six months to two years) and long-range (two
to five years) planning. The NCHEMS Student Flow Model may aid in the
planning mode of the department.

The evaluative functions are related to the department goals and
objectives. Tools should be designed to measure the effectiveness

of the activities stemming from operation and planning. The results
of the evaluative functions should be input at the data base, the
operational function, and/or the planning function in order to improve
decision making.

Graphically, the DMS is presented in Figure 3.
ADDENDUM

Resource material, available through Dr. John Minter, that may help
the design team and task force include:

Brown, F., et a1. "Profile for Perceived Values of Contributions
of Member's Activities to Organization Goals." East Lansing,
June 1971, 26 pages (mimeo).

Featherstone, R., ed. "Salary and Promotion Policies."
East Lansing, June 1971, 26 pages (mimeo).

Smith, David. "Notes on Systems Analysis and Planning."
Department of Administration and Higher Education, 1969,
20 pages (mimeo).

Vinsonhaler, John F.; Millan, Danie; and Gillmore, Gerald M.
"Computer Management of Instructional Resources." ILS Report
No. 19. Learning Systems Institute. College of Education,
East Lansing, August 1960, 28 pages.

Individuals working in department management projects related to DMS
may find these materials helpful:

Hausman, Dr. W. Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, University
of Minnesota. Project Training of Group Leaders.

Taylor, Dr. Robert. Virginia Polytech Institute. Project—-
Simulating and Gaming Models for Department Management.

127

 

 

 

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APPENDIX F

COVER LETTER AND QUESTIONNAIRE: DEPARTMENT
CHAIRPERSONS AND THE USE OF PRESENTLY AND

POTENTIALLY AVAILABLE FACULTY DATA

 

128

February 22, 1976

Dear

I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of Higher Education and
Administration at Michigan State University. My dissertation topic

is a study of department chairpersons: the retrieval systems used to
store faculty data and the frequency with which that information is used.

It is no secret that the role of the department chairperson is difficult
to fill. To wit: ". . . the seat of the chairman is an uneasy one in an
era of societal change. He must make the existing system function while
keeping an open ear and mind toward the cries for academic reform. Rush-
ing toward him from one direction is the puzzling and somewhat alarming
specter of unionism and from another, the often-ill-informed political
representatives of a dissatisfied public. Central administrations aided
by computers and long-overdue applications of management principles are
becoming increasingly powerful and efficient, leaving the chairman little
room to maneuver or juggle budgetary categories. His faculty is insecure
and resistant to change, and his students scream, 'Relevance!’ and want
to abolish traditional standards" (Brann, 1972).

In addition, the chairperson is fast becoming the real academic officer
of the university. But even as the position takes on greater importance
in the university, there is still very little research about department
chairpersons. The purpose of this study is to partially bridge that
gap. The enclosed questionnaire seeks information in four areas:

(1) identification of the retrieval system you currently use, (2) the
frequency with which you use available faculty data, (3) the retrieval
system you would prefer to use, and (4) the faculty data you would
prefer to have available and the frequency with which you would use

it for each of the four selected decisions.

I will be happy to send you a copy of the results, or provide you with
a bibliography of related literature. Please indicate your preference
in the space provided on page two of the general directions.

Enclosed is a self-addressed envelope to return the questionnaire.
Your prompt and candid reply will be appreciated. Your return will
be kept confidential and used only for this study.

Sincerely,

Jerome Halverson

JH/llc
Enclosures

QUESTIONNAIRE

Department Chairpersons: Information Retrieval Systems
and the Use of Presently Available and Potentially
Available Faculty Data

General Directions:

I.

II.

PART ONE

Section One: Place and "X" in the square to indicate the

 

information retrieval system you currently use to store faculty
data.

Definitions of Information Retrieval Systems:

1. Folder-~a file containing faculty data collected by
the department and stored in the department chairperson's
office.

2. Self-Report--any faculty data which the department
chairperson must request that is not already contained
in the folder.

 

3. MIS--a Management Information System refers to any very
efficient system, whether manual or mechanical, which
makes faculty data rapidly retrievable.

4. NAf-not available.

Section Two: Place an "X" in the square to indicate how frequently

 

you use the 17 faculty data items to make salary, tenure, promotion
and selection of new faculty decisions.

- OZ--"Never" Use It

- 25%--"Seldom" Use It

- SOZ--"Sometimes" Use It
7SZ-"0ften" Use It

lOO%--"Always" Use It

Scale for Section Two:

LJ'l-I-‘LaOlNJi-flI

PART TWO

Section One: Place an "X" in the square to indicate the retrieval
system that you would prefer to use to store faculty data.

 

Section Two: Place an "X" in the square to indicate the approximate
frequency with which you would use faculty data if it were available
in a preferred retrieval system.

 

129

130 . Page 2

III. Please indicate the size of your department in the space below.

The number should include professors, associate professors,
assistant professors, graduate assistants, research assistants,
lectures, instructors and specialists.

Size of your department:

 

IV. Additional Information

1. I would like to have the results of this study.

If "yes," please give name and address:

 

 

 

2. I would like to have a copy of the selected bibliography
for this study.

[:lYes
[:lNo

NOTE: If you want either the results of this study or the
bibliography but prefer to have your responses remain
anonymous, please send your request under separate
cover.

1:31.

 

 

 

 

PAR: 08! Scale for Section Two
Pazsrxrtr AVAILABLE rxcurrr DATA: 1 — o:-"Nev.r" ‘
ITS RETRIEVAL srsrzu 2 - zsz-"Se1don"
sun turqurncr or as: 3 - 502-"Sometimes"
4 - 752-”0ften"
5 - 1002-"Aluays"
SECTION our sscrros two

 

Place an ”X” in the square to indicate the
information retrieval system you currently
use to store the 17 faculty data items
below.

 

Folder
$61!?

HIS
NA

F/Sl!

P/SRIMIS
SR/HIS

 

Age

Place an ”X? in the square to indicate how
frequently you use the 17 faculty data items
at the left to make salary, tenure, promotion
(See scale above)

and selection decisions.

7'5"

Tenure

_
4

5

Promotion

1

2

3

Selection
of New
Faculty

Ts 17TTF‘

 

Experience

 

Degree(s)

 

4.

Rank

 

Publications

 

Teaching load

 

Research

 

Student
advisement

 

9.

Administrative
responsibilities

 

10.

Consultations

 

Public service

 

12.

Off-campus
teaching exp .

 

13.

Foreign
teaching exp.

 

14

Office hours

 

Committee work

 

16.

Peer evaluation

 

17.

Student
evaluation

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

132

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pm TWO Scale for Section Two
POTENTIALLY AVAILABLE FACULTY DATA: 1 _ Oz_nxfl.ru
ITS PREFERRED RETRIEVAL SYSTEM 2 _ 251__us‘m°‘n
All!) ESTIMATED FREQUENCY OF USE 3 _ soz__u5m:m‘u
4 - 752—"0ften"
5 - MOI—"Always"
SECTION ONE SECTION TWO
Place an "I" in the square to indicate Place an "x" in the square to indicate
the retrieval system that you would estimated frequency with which you would use
prefer to use to store the 17 faculty the 17 faculty data items to make the deci-
data items below. sions below if they were available in a pre-
ferred retrieval system. (See scale above)
U
‘8'. Selection
0 o: of New
3 “f E {3 Salary Tenure Promotion Faculty
'5 H 8 fl —— ——— —— ———_,
sam.ae: F
““52“...“ 1236 2345 12345 12335
——— ——— —— . —— —
1. Age
2. Experience
3. Degree(s)
4. Rank
5. Publications
6. Teaching load
7. Research
8. Student
advisement
9. Administrative
responsibilities
lO. Consultations
ll. Public service
12. Off-campus
teaching exp.
13. Foreign
teaching exp.
14. Office hours
15. Connittee work
16. Peer evaluation
17. Student
evaluation
——_ ——— ——— —b-—x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

APPENDIX G

MEAN AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FOR PRESENTLY

AVAILABLE FACULTY DATA

 

133

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Selection
of New
Salary Tenure Promotion Faculty
1 2 3 4 S 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 S 1 2 3 4 5
1. A . . . . , . .
ge \& \ e
\ ‘\
2. Experience 0 n . r . . 7 . . .
3. Degree(s) . K . . . . 1 . . ) .
4. Rank - ) . 1k . 1 . . J .
5. Publications ° > o . . . ) . .>..
6e TeaChing load ' JR ‘ 0 < D o (I e e < e
7. Research . . . - . . . .
/’>
8. Student advisement ° ' ' ' - r - . Y o
9. Administrative , _ . 0 . . . V .
responsibilities I
10. Consultations ' ° ° \ ' ' ( ° ° -
11. Public service ' ' ' ‘ ' ' ' 1) °
12. Off-campus teaching ° ) ' ’ v ' - o
13. Foreign teaching P l ' ~ - - - v .
l4. Offic ho rs ° L ' ° ' - - - .
e u \ x \‘
15. Committee work ' ' ° - -\V . . -
x
16. Peer evaluation ° * ° - - - . o‘jy .
17. Student evaluation ° I ' ') - 1 - . If .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

l = 02 "Never"; 2 - 25% "Seldom"; 3 = 50% "Sometimes"; 4 = 75% "Often";
5 = 1007. "Always"

Figure 4. Means and standard deviations for presently available faculty
data and its frequency of use.

134

Presently Available Faculty Data and Its Frequency of Use

Standard

Item Decision Means Deviation
Salary 1.8 1.3
Tenure 2.1 1.4
Age Promotion 2.2 1.4
Selection of new faculty 3.4 1.3
Salary 3.8 1.3
Tenure 4.3 1.1
Experience Promotion 4.4 1.0
Selection of new faculty 4.4 1.0
Salary 3.2 1.6
Tenure 3.9 1.5
Degree(s) Promotion 3.9 1.5
Selection of new faculty 4.6 0.8
Salary 3.7 1.4
Tenure 4.0 1.4
Rank Promotion 4 .1 1.2
Selection of new faculty 4.0 1.4
Salary 4.3 1.1
. Tenure 4.5 0.9
Publications Promotion 4.6 0.8
Selection of new faculty 4.4 0.9
Salary 4.0 1.2
Tenure 3.9 1.3
Teaching load Promotion 4.0 1.4
Selection of new faculty 3.0 1.5
Salary 4.6 0.9
Research Tenure 4.5 0.9
Promotion 4.6 0.9
Selection of new faculty 4.6 0.9
Salary 3.5 1.2
Tenure 3.2 1.2
Student advisement Promotion 3.4 1.3
Selection of new faculty 2.5 1.3
Salary 3.9 1.2
Administrative Tenure 3.7 1.3
responsibilities Promotion 3.8 1.3
Selection of new faculty 2.9 1.5

Item

Consultations

Public service

Off-campus teaching

Foreign teaching

Office hours

Committee work

Peer evaluation

Student evaluation

135

Decision

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

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APPENDIX H

MEAN AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS FOR POTENTIALLY

AVAILABLE FACULTY DATA

136

Selection
of New
Salary Tenure Promotion Faculty
1 2 3 4 5 l 2 3 4 2 4 1 4
1. Age

2. Experience

. Degree(s)

Rank
. Publications
. Teaching load
. Research

. Student advisement

ve
ilities
. Consultations
Public service
. Off—campus teaching
Foreign teaching
Office hours
. Committee work

. Peer evaluation

. Student evaluation

 

l = 02 "Never"; 2 = 25% "Seldom"; 3 - 50% "Sometimes"; 4 = 75% "Often";
5 = 1002 "Always" ‘ '

Figure 5. Means and standard deviations for potentially available
faculty data and its estimated frequency of use.

137

Potentially_Availab1e Faculty Data and Its Frequency of Use

 

Standard

Item Decision Means Deviation
Salary 2.2 1.6
Tenure 2.5 1.6
Age Promotion 2.5 1.6
Selection of new faculty 3.5 1.4
Salary 3.9 1.3
Tenure 4.2 1.2
Experience Promotion 4.3 1.1
Selection of new faculty 4.5 0.9
Salary 3.3 1.6
Tenure 3.8 1.5
Degree(s) Promotion 3.8 1.5
Selection of new faculty 4.6 0.8
Salary 3.8 1.5
Tenure 4.0 1.5
Rank Promotion 4.1 1.3
Selection of new faculty 4.2 1.3
Salary 4.4 1.0
Tenure 4.5 0.9
Publications Promotion 4.6 0.8
Selection of new faculty 4.5 0.8
Salary 4.0 1.3
Tenure 3.9 1.4
Teaching load Promotion 3.9 1.4
Selection of new faculty 3.1 1.5
Salary 4.5 0.9
Research Tenure 4.5 0.9
Promotion 4.5 0.9
Selection of new faculty 4.6 0.8
Salary 3.7 1.3
Tenure 3.4 1.3
Student advisement Promotion 3.6 1.3
Selection of new faculty 3.0 1.4
Salary 4.0 1.1
Administrative Tenure 3.8 1.2
responsibilities Promotion 3.9 1.3
Selection of new faculty 3.3 1.4

Item

Consultations

Public service

Off-campus teaching

Foreign teaching

Office hours

Committee work

Peer evaluation

Student evaluation

138

Decision

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
Promotion
Selection

Salary
Tenure
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Salary
Tenure
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Selection

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APPENDIX I

THE USE OF PRESENT AND POTENTIAL STORAGE

SYSTEMS ACROSS l7 FACULTY DATA ITEMS

RELATED TO DEPARTMENT SIZE

1:39

Table 10. Department Size and Presently Available and Potentially Available Storage and Retrieval
Systems

 
 
 
 
  

 

Retrieval
System

Self-
Report

  
 

    

 
  

 
 

    

    

512.‘ Folder P/SR P/SR/MIS SR/HIS

    
 
  

 
 
  

  
 

b

   

 
  

9 O 0

  

Small c

          

   

 
  
 

   
 

24 l l

 

Present Medium

   

Large

 
  

Age

 
  

Small

  

Potential

 

Medium

    
 
 

Large

Small

00 OO

 
    
 
 
 
 

Present

Experience

    

Potential

Present

 
 
 
 
 

Degree(s)

    

Potential

Present

  
     

Potential

Present

 
 
 
 
 

Publications

  

Potential

140

Table lO--Continued

 

. Retrieval Self-
Item System Size Folder Report MIS NA P/SR P/SR/MIS SR/MIS
Small
Present Medium
Large
Teaching load
Small

Potential Medium

“'3' 10.0 1.0.0
Small 3 O 0
Medium 12 A
Large
Research
Small
Potential
Present
Student
advisement
Potential
40.0 10.0 40.0
4 3 1
Present 1‘
6
Administrative
responsibilities
Potential
Consultation

Potential

141

Table lO-—Continued

 

Retrieval Self-
Item System Size Folder Report MIS NA P/SR F/SR/MIS SR/MIS

Small 0 8 0 O 0

Present Medium

Large
Public service
Small

Potential Medium

Large
Small
Present Medium
Off-campus Large
teaching

Small
Potential Medium

Large

Small

Medium
Large

Foreign teaching
Small

Potential Medium

Large

Small
Present Medium
Large

Office hours
Small

Potential Medium

Large

Small
Medium
Large
Committee work
Small
Medium

Large

.1132

Table lO-—Continued

 

Self-

Item Size Polder Report MIS NA P/SR P/SR/MIS SR/MIS
Small 2
20.0
Present Medium 5
Peer Large
evaluation Small
Potential Medium
Large
Small
Present Medium
Student Large
evaluation

Small

Potential Medium

7
L““‘ 70.0

aSmall - 1-20; Medium - 21-60; Large - 61 and above.

bNumber of departments.

cPercentage within groups.

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