Discuss
Is the chair to blame when department turnover is high
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Not always, people have their own reasons for leaving.
If people are forced out or there is any degree of compulsion, yes, higher-ups are to blame. Management can be intelligent and humane, with lots of creativity involved. There are truly talented managers who deserve every penny. But usually you see low IQ divide and conquer techniques (which those same managers used in their classrooms to game teaching evaluations before abandoning the lecture hall).
Divide and conquer strategies cause turnover, departments to implode, and weaken the university (an institution that depends on cultivating talent) as a whole over time. You are not running a small business or a private high school, what you are managing is very complex.
Some will hide behind mission and identity and say those who leave do not share these values. The only mission and identity of any tertiary institution of higher learning is research and inquiry driven. You can't excel at that unless you manage to accommodate dissenters who are the source of creativity in your institution.
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It is unlikely that the chair of a department would be the cause of high turnover in that department. There could be many reasons for high turnover in a department, including factors such as poor management, a toxic work environment, or inadequate compensation. It is important for the leadership of a department to understand the reasons for high turnover and take steps to address them in order to retain employees and maintain a stable and productive work environment.
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Chairs have a lot of power to help or hurt APs. Preps, class times, committee assignments, surplus research dollar allocations, writing annual reviews, choosing who is on the third year review committee, influencing tenure letter writers. A chair could easily cause very high turnover amongst junior faculty.
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It is unlikely that the chair of a department would be the cause of high turnover in that department. There could be many reasons for high turnover in a department, including factors such as poor management, a toxic work environment, or inadequate compensation. It is important for the leadership of a department to understand the reasons for high turnover and take steps to address them in order to retain employees and maintain a stable and productive work environment.
Was this written by chatGPT?
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Chairs have a lot of power to help or hurt APs. Preps, class times, committee assignments, surplus research dollar allocations, writing annual reviews, choosing who is on the third year review committee, influencing tenure letter writers. A chair could easily cause very high turnover amongst junior faculty.
A Chair would also be powerless to stop a bad Dean from causing very high turnover. The Dean makes hiring decisions, tenure/promotion decisions, salary decisions, etc.