Reminiscing a little about (not) being DH

During Covid, our department head was called up to become associate dean. I recalled when I was interviewed in 2014, I was asked if I would be willing to be department head. At the time I had said yes, but give me some time please to get to know folks. Well, I'd certainly had some time, so I volunteered and was taken in. That happened about the time I stopped blogging (#not a coincidence?).

I think of being department head much like a calling at church. It's a service. You take it up for a time, do the best you can, then return to normal life when you are released. Folks take turns bearing the weight. Somebody's got to do it, and my (brief, unscientific) observations lead me to believe that I do a passable job with lower mental/emotional costs than it would give many others.

I gotta say, I really enjoyed the first two years or so of my term in office. Dean Shao was an outstanding mentor who gave me some clear expectations early on that happened to fit very well with my predispositions. The other department heads, associate deans, and I got along really well. Several said they had never been in a group as well-functioning and happy as ours. We laughed a lot and we made good progress together. The college became AACSB accredited, for one thing!

The faculty in the Accounting, Finance, and Economics department have all been wonderful to work with. I admire them. I trust them. They, each of them, care about the students, take pride in the work they do, and are reasonable people to work with who rarely let ego get in the way. Both I and the fellow who followed me as interim DH said we were willing to do this because the department really is filled with wonderful people. The three women who worked as administrative assistants for the department were a delight and I appreciated everything they were able to do for the students, the department, and me. Really, a great group of people to work with!

One part of the job I did not expect to love as much as I did was interviewing and hiring new faculty. When they came up for a fly-out interview, I told them that I wanted to conduct things as if they were the one we were going to hire, and it was my job to help them. Taking that attitude made otherwise awkward interactions much more gratifying! I appreciated each of the folks we interviewed and I am so pleased about the folks we did eventually hire. I think they are genuinely great hires and I have every confidence in them.

I finally set it down Jan 2024 and returned to faculty status because I saw how quickly my remaining time with Hyrum was ticking away. He had many activities and was often not an home, so if I wanted to catch him when he was available, I needed to be here more, especially in the late afternoon.

I was also very happy to put it down. I think I'd best leave it at that.

I have come to appreciate another aspect of my church: when I was released as Elders' Quorum President, someone else was called in the very next sentence to take that up. He is someone I respect, who I have every confidence in. I set down nearly every worry really very rapidly! At church, I can set the calling down (when I was asked to) and walk away with a very clear conscience. It's been harder to here. I realized at a recent faculty meeting that I still feel an echo of the responsibility for caring for everyone else's wellbeing nearly two years later. And even if it's only an echo (and even less than the echo of the ability to do anything about it), the echo has its own gravity.

As we have had some difficulty refilling that position since then, I've had some friendly invitations from folks in the department to try picking up the guantlet again. "There have been a number of changes at Tarleton, maybe you'd like to pick it up again now?" "Hyrum has left home, so you have time to pick it up again, right?"

I have appreciated these votes of confidence and gratitude because I recognize that's what they are. They also miss one of the points: I don't aspire to climb the acadmic ladder and move from DH to dean to whocares. I enjoy being in the classroom, teaching and performing and mentoring; I value the time to do research that is meaningful and impactful. Those are things that get sacrificed in order to do the administering well (so that everybody else can do their teaching and research as free from care as possible!). I've spent 5.5 of my 14 years as an academic being department head (two in Nigeria, 3.5 here), and I think that's a really good run. And it's still the right time for me to focus on my teaching and research.