The Associate Professor Chair: Making Progress to Full Rank

Among the top 10 stressors in a national survey of academic chairpersons (Gmelch et al., 2017) are too little time for research/scholarship and excessive workloads. These related issues are likely in play at most colleges and universities, with the exception of top tier research universities and elite liberal arts colleges. Faculty members who have ventured into chair positions at all but the top tier institutions will tell you they sacrificed much for the opportunity to lead, and what was sacrificed was primarily their scholarly work and, to a lesser degree, their teaching—the two activities that likely attracted them to the academy.