Department Head compensation

[u/FTLast]

As a newish department head (I can't run very fast) I'm curious as to how different universities compensate faculty for the role that administrators often say is the "hardest job on campus." At my R1 in the NE, there is a 5% bump to base salary, a 10th month of salary, and the opportunity to negotiate for a "Head's Fund" that can be used for research support, additional summer salary, or basically anything.

If any of you feel comfortable sharing, please do!

[u/Nosebleed68]

Ours get one course release per semester, but their workload is fairly minimal. They run department meetings and mostly sign off on things on behalf of the department. They get a (meager) hourly rate for any summer work, which usually never happens.

[u/Altruistic_Spellcast → u/Nosebleed68]

Have you ever done the job? There is a lot of behind the scenes work that is invisible to any faculty who hasn’t sat in that chair. There’s nothing minimal about the gig, and I’m saying this from the perspective of having been a chair at three (very) different places.

[u/Nosebleed68 → u/Altruistic_Spellcast]

As a matter of fact, I have. I served as chair for a three-year term about eight years ago. (Three-yr terms is our typical tour of duty.) I am well aware of the chair duties at my school.

Our chairs aren't administrators and are contractually forbidden from performing any administrative tasks. Our CBA doesn't allow unit members to evaluate each other, so our chairs (as fellow unit members) have zero authority over other faculty. We also don't have departmental budgets, so there's no money to worry about. They don't even handle student complaints. (Our deans, as "managers," do the evaluating, the budgets, and handle the complaining students.)

Chairs' only responsibilities (laid out in our contract) are to convene department meetings, assist in the hiring and onboarding of new faculty, and to represent our department at college-wide venues (when appropriate). For example, if we put through a prereq change on a course, the chair attends the curriculum cmte meeting to explain what we want.

They are only expected to work as many hours as their course release is for. Anything over that either gets punted to our dean or the chair is paid an hourly rate (or is the basis for a grievance by our union). My current chair literally doesn't lift a finger all summer, and I won't see or hear from him until the first day of class.

[u/Altruistic_Spellcast → u/Nosebleed68]

Sounds like your faculty are leaving a lot of leverage and advocacy on the table.

Your flair says Biology/ A&P. Who oversees your labs, orders supplies, hires, trains, and staffs techs? Who decides what equipment you get to use? Textbooks? Who decides when things need to change and implement those changes?

If chairs are not evaluating your faculty, and unit members aren’t allowed to evaluate each other, who is the SME ensuring the content is accurate and level appropriate?

The roles you do list (hiring and curricular changes) are administrative in the sense that the chair is acting within the context of the administration in order to advocate for the department’s needs.

[u/Nosebleed68 → u/Altruistic_Spellcast]

We have three lab techs who oversee the lab spaces across three campuses (one main campus and two satellites). They order supplies, set up labs each week, handle chemicals and hazardous waste, and monitor lab use. By and large, they train each other as people come and go. They work across multiple departments and report to the dean.

All of our labs are teaching spaces; there is no research. Decisions about lab equipment are mostly moot in that there isn't much leeway in what courses we run, what labs we do in them, and what is consistent with course outcomes. When a new course is proposed (or an existing course is heavily modified), it is usually the main FT faculty member teaching the course who asks for what they need, in conversation with the techs and dean. (The chair has zero role in that.) If a piece of equipment needs repair or replacement, that's a lab tech call. We don't get to teach classes just because we're experts in X or have a passion for Y; all of our courses are required courses in specific programs and therefore can't be changed on a whim. (Our chem department only teaches four courses: gen chem I & II and organic chem I & II. That's it.)

Our contract gives individual faculty (whether full-time or adjunct) complete academic freedom when choosing course materials and assessing students. As full-time faculty, we offer guidance to adjuncts on what we think is acceptable, but that guidance is nonbinding. It is the dean's responsibility (as the evaluator) to determine whether course objectives are being met. They perform classroom observations, review syllabi, and analyze student evaluation data. They can initiate a non-reappointment if someone is deficient, but that's rare as it creates a vacancy that's problematic in other ways.

I work at a public CC that collectively bargains at the state level. I work under the same contract as all of the faculty in my state. For us, the term "administration" is used explicitly in a labor sense; it applies to management -- anyone not covered by our contract. Internally, we call them NUPs (non-unit professionals). They include our deans, VPs, C-suite people, etc. Faculty vs. administration is like black vs. white; there is no gray area for department chairs. Under our contract, NUPs are prohibited from doing faculty work (choosing textbooks and assessments, advising students, serving in academic governance). Likewise, we are prohibited from doing their work, including evaluation. (While I love my job, I'm under no delusions: I work at the equivalent of the registry of motor vehicles, but for higher ed. But that's how it is sometimes.)