Workshop on Chairs/Directors Leading Academic Departments/Schools

As Chairs and Directors, your role involves providing academic and administrative leadership for your Department and School. This is an exciting and complex role where you strive to ensure collegiality and collegial decision making within your unit, represent your Department/School in the University and where you are responsible for the stewardship of the human and financial resources of your Department/School. At times, you may want some tools to assist you in carrying out your role.

At one of our past Chairs, Directors and Deans (CDD) meetings there was strong support from Chairs and Directors for bringing a Centre for Higher Education Research and Development (CHERD) session to Ryerson. We are pleased to advise that CHERD has been retained to provide a workshop on Chairs/Directors Leading Academic Departments/Schools at Ryerson University on May 7 and May 8, 2019 at Thomas Lounge, Oakham House, 63 Gould Street.

The purpose of the workshop is to assist Chairs/Directors in assessing your departmental context, gain a better understanding of the role of a Chair/Director and how this role fits into your overall career goals and to provide you with academic leadership tools.

Striving to ensure collegiality and collegial decision making within your Department/School can at times be frustrating, time-consuming and leave you, and others, drained. These conflicts can take time and energy away from your other important tasks and can sometimes strain or damage relationships. Resolving conflicts can be particularly challenging without the right tools.

At this workshop, you will be able to locate the role of Chairs/Directors as academic leaders within the larger university context, and be able position this role within the specific Ryerson context. You’ll be able to distinguish between hard and soft power and explain how Chairs/Directors can use emotional intelligence, negotiation and conflict resolution to exercise judgment and lead your Departments/Schools.

The take away from this workshop will be the creation of an action plan for your key three priorities as Chair/Director and establish and schedule opportunities for regular learning and feedback from your network of Chairs and Directors.

The facilitators for the workshop are Jonathan Malloy and Loleen Berdahl. Jonathan Malloy is a Professor of Political Science at Carleton University. Professor Malloy served as Chair of his department from 2012 – 2018 and as of July 1, 2019 will hold the Bell Chair in Canadian Parliamentary Democracy in his department. Loleen Berdahl is a Professor and Head of Political Studies at the University of Saskatchewan.