Waterloo - UW’s senate gave approval last week to a new version of UW Policy 40, the document that sets out what department chairs are supposed to do, how they’re appointed, and how they can be removed if necessary. The policy will go to the university’s board of governors for final approval on February 5.

The new policy, recommended by the Faculty Relations Committee, got only brief discussion before senate voted its approval. The main point brought up was a change in the normal length of a chair’s term: previously “normally three or four years, renewable for three or two years”, it’s now “up to four years, renewable for up to four years”, producing a maximum term of eight years rather than six.

“The chair is a first-among-equals,” said David De Vidi of the philosophy department, president of the UW faculty association and therefore co-chair of the Faculty Relations Committee along with the university’s provost. He pointed out another change in the new document: the requirement that a formal nominating committee be set up, and explicitly check opinion on the department, before there’s a recommendation that a chair be reappointed.

Provost Amit Chakma spoke about a new structure for such nominating committees, which include representatives of faculty and staff in the department plus several other members: a faculty member from outside the department, the dean, a delegate of the provost, and graduate and undergraduate students.

For the first time, under the new policy, the students on the committee are definitely voting members. But there’s a new “double majority” provision: “A successful candidate must have majority support from all voting members of the committee as well as majority support from the faculty and staff representatives of the department in the committee.”

The new policy includes some revisions to its section about the “duties and responsibilities” of a department chair (which also means the director of an academic unit that’s labeled “school” rather than “department”). An excerpt from that section: “The Chair has the dual role of representing the particular department's policies and points of view, and, as an officer of the Faculty, making independent judgments on total Faculty matters. The Chair will report directly to the Dean of the Faculty.

“In addition, the Chair is a member of the University’s academic leadership team and as such contributes to the academic mission of the University through formal and informal venues, and interacts with Chairs and other academic and academic support leaders from across the campus.

“Within the department, the Chair is responsible for providing academic and administrative leadership. In providing this leadership the Chair shall consult with the members of the department, providing them with an adequate basis of information concerning its operations, and ascertaining their views and ideas concerning the various aspects of departmental operations. The Chair normally will call regular department meetings, but alternative formal mechanisms of consultation may be developed.

“The principal duties of a Chair shall include the advancement of the academic mission of the unit, the upholding of the highest academic standards, the assignment of equitable responsibilities, the management of the departmental budget, the implementation of the academic program, the oversight of the department's support staff, the allocation of space, the carrying out of annual performance reviews, and recommendations on matters pertaining to promotion and tenure, new appointments and reappointments, and salaries.”