Monitoring Office Hours and Syllabi
The department chair is expected to
make certain all departmental faculty have posted office hours and are
distributing appropriately detailed syllabi for all courses. The chair should also be familiar with the
accommodations policies for disabled students and the academic integrity
policies. These policies should be referenced
on course syllabi. Syllabi should also
contain course learning goals. Chairs report
on the presence of learning goals when completing the annual assessment form
for the department.
Student Departmental Awards and Honors
Each department and program is
responsible for determining distinction for graduating students in the
department or program. Note that
distinction is not given in a discipline but in a department or program. Details concerning criteria can be found in
the Catalog.
Departments and programs may also
have named awards and honors that are given each year. New awards and honors should be proposed to
the Committee on Faculty for approval.
Department and program chairs submit
names for distinction, awards and honors to Academic Affairs. Full legal names and student IDs are needed
for any student receiving any of these awards.
The information is due two weeks before Honors Day. Any tangible awards are due to be delivered
to Academic Affairs one week before Honors Day.
The department or program prints all the award letters and starts the
process for any checks. Academic Affairs
prints the distinction letters.
Master Calendar Issues
The Events Scheduling section under Academic Policies and Procedures in the Faculty Handbook
describes our complex event scheduling policy.
Please ask for help if you don’t understand it. Plan any events well in advance and ensure
appropriate reservations are made via the Master Calendar.
Monitoring Department Advising
Registrar’s Office
Chairs are the liaison with the Registrar’s Office for the purpose of
approving transfer courses, substitutions for major requirements, and credits
received by testing.
Department and program chairs—as well as
chairs of interdisciplinary studies majors—should submit senior capstone
experience grades to the Registrar’s Office by the deadline. For
incompletes submitted earlier, a grade change needs to be turned in once
students complete the experience so they may officially graduate.
Admissions Office
Chairs work with the Office of
Admissions to assist in recruiting students and selecting students for special
scholarships.
Majors Fair
The Majors Fair is an annual
event that encourages students in exploring potential majors. All
departments and programs are invited to participate. Department and program chairs should make
certain that a faculty member and Academic Affairs staff are on hand to assist
students with major declaration. The Fair is scheduled just before course
preregistration to facilitate course selection for new majors.
Maintaining Records
Department and program chairs are the official record keepers for the
department or program. These records
include course offerings, enrollments and current majors and minors as well as
the placements of students graduating from the department or program.
Most of the needed records are kept in the Campus Web system, but
chairs should keep printouts of some of this information as it eventually
rotates out of the Campus Web files.
Reports on current majors and minors can be obtained from the area or building
administrative assistants. In general,
the chairs are responsible for collecting records—both those appearing in
Campus Web and those which do not—and seeing that the records are kept by the
appropriate Area and Building Assistant.
At the end of each semester, chairs should submit to the Coordinator of
Undergraduate Research a list of undergraduate research projects (both
independent and collaborative, whether or not the project achieved Odyssey UR
credit) carried out by the students in the department or program since the
previous submission.
Graduate school and job placement records for graduates are more
difficult to manage. Work with your
department to keep up with recent graduates as best you can. A campus Outcomes Committee is working on ways
to better organize the collection of this information from the departments, the
Alumni Affairs office, and Career Services.
Webpages
Departments and programs are responsible for maintaining appropriate
web pages. Chairs need to do this or
assign a faculty member or student worker to this task. If you do not currently have a web page, then
the Communications Office will design a basic one for you to which you can add
pages as desired. Training sessions for
using Ektron to manage web pages on
the Hendrix servers are also available from the Communications Office.
Bailey Library
Although there is currently no formal role
between and the library, some department chairs field book requests from the
faculty members in the department and send the selected titles to the library
to order (as funds are available.) In some departments these requests come
directly to the library from individual faculty members. It would be helpful if the chair provided
oversight and communication to the library in this area. If possible, chairs should meet, as a focus
group, once a year with the library director to provide qualitative input about
collections and services.