Boston University Arts & Sciences

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Related Links

• Provost Website
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A Guide for
Arts & Sciences Chairs

The chair is the chief academic and administrative officer of a department, and both leads and holds the final department-level responsibility for personnel, finances, curriculum, and the working climate of the department. The chair is the chief liaison between the department and the College, University, and external constituencies, and is responsible for representing and advocating for the department to the College and beyond, and for representing and advocating for the College and University.

Within these broad categories of responsibility lie many specific — and often complicated — tasks that are accomplished in collaboration with departmental colleagues, other department chairs, the dean and her staff, and colleagues and administrators throughout the University. These include leading the annual academic planning exercise and other planning processes; proposing appropriate changes to the curriculum and degree programs; overseeing faculty recruitment, mentoring, promotion, tenure, merit, and related processes; overseeing staff recruitment, mentoring, promotion, evaluation, salary, and related processes; leading and monitoring the administrative and financial policies, procedures, and decisions of the department; making sure the standards of proper academic, administrative, and workplace conduct are maintained; and many other functions. The department chair proposes to the Dean the department's annual operating budget, course schedule, and changes in faculty and staff compensation, and prepares the department's annual report to the College and Graduate School. All department chairs and program directors should participate in monthly meetings of the CAS Council of Chairs and Directors (CCD) and serve as advisors to the Dean.

Connected with this page you will find the pieces of the “Chair's Handbook.” Some of what appears here is designed specifically to assist chairs and directors in their work, but much of this material is of interest and importance to CAS faculty and staff more generally. This is a work under construction. In the near future, we will have a revised Faculty and Staff Guide to Arts & Sciences and a revised Chair's Handbook. Thank you for your patience.