Departments that Work
Building and Sustaining Cultures of Excellence in Academic Programs

"Realistic and inspiring, Wergin's book is about how to develop chairs into active and creative leaders who can make a difference in the quality of their departments."
—Estela Mara Bensimon, Professor of Higher Education and Director, Center for Urban Education, University of Southern California

Jon F. Wergin (Author), Estela Mara Bensimon (Foreword by)

9781882982578, Wiley

Hardback, published 24 July 2007

176 pages
23.1 x 16.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.357 kg

Evaluation in departments is widespread but often fails to spark positive change. Based on his extensive work with academic departments across the country, Wergin explains that successful department evaluation exists only when faculty and departments have a strong influence on the purposes, processes, and methods of evaluation. The central purpose of Departments That Work is how academic programs can make evaluation more useful and critical reflection more likely.

Topics include:
* How quality has become confused with such concepts as effectiveness, productivity, and marketability and how it might more constructively be conceived as focusing on the engagement of the department with its constituencies
* An examination of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators of faculty work, the concept of organizational motivation, and the factors influencing identification with the institution and motivation to contribute to it
* The three critical factors of effective department evaluation
* How academic leaders can create a culture of engagement
* How to define and negotiate academic values with diverse stakeholders
* How to ask the right questions and collect the right idea
* How to determine standards and make meaning of evaluation data
* An overall summary of specific recommendations for academic leaders and departmental faculty, including an appendix of the constructs presented in each chapter

About the Author.

Foreword.

Subject Areas: Education [JN]