Design Effective Academic Department Reviews

Chief academic officers and deans have increasingly realized that meeting enrollment, cost efficiency, and student success goals requires change at the academic department level. Essentially all academic programs are housed within these units, which are responsible for enrolling, educating, and awarding credentials to students.

From a budgetary perspective, 44% of public institution and 51% of private institution costs reside in these units as well, allocated largely toward faculty salaries, benefits, and facilities costs. Yet the department chairs leading these units rarely have the training and skills needed to effectively align activities with important strategic goals—if they even know how to translate strategic goals into goals for their own departments.