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Next week will be the last week of my term as a Head of Department, and so some thoughts and reflections on the past 6 years
First, the positives. I always felt like I would be glad I had done the role after I had done it, and that is still the case. I am absolutely glad that I undertook the role, and the positives outweigh the negatives.
The role is best seen as a service to your colleagues and students and then to the Institution. The great people you get to work with and the great students you get to help along the way makes the job so rewarding.
I think (thankfully) at my institution that heads can influence the university, and that the path to doing such is through a mix of goodwill and credibility.
I have been around enough to know that this might not be the case elsewhere.
Getting to hire many new colleagues who will shape the department for the future has been a great privilege, and I have been fortunate to be in a position to do so.
No some negatives. In some ways the role of Head is an irrational proposition. In effect you are asked to assume a lot of formal responsibility on top of your normal job.
There is a tendency for central university admin to view heads of academic departments as full time administrators. We are not. We continue to be teachers, scholars, researchers.
There is also a tendency in my view for some central admin to assume that their own patch of admin should be your priority. This leads to sometimes unreasonable competing demands on your time and mental bandwidth.
I think it is fair to say that being Head is not going to win you any prizes. Look at the awards and recognitions handed out by your own institutions: how many recognised heads of department for doing the unseen work that helps keep the whole show on the road (TLDR; its zero).
There is a limitation to recognition of the roles of heads through allowances (due to Gov restrictions). In what other walk of life would you take on formal line management responsbilities for dozens of people on top of your normal job for zero additional renumeration?
And finally the role appears to have changed; it is now more burdensome, less about intellectual and academic leadership and more about administration. This is not institution specific, and many of the drivers for this derive from outside the university.
The Head is where the rubber hits the road in terms of policy deployment, and details for deployment are often best characterised as "the head of department will figure something out".
As I said, on balance I am very glad I have done it and have had the opportunity to do so. I am also now pretty tired. COVID didn't help, but there is definitely a finite amount of time through which you can juggle everything and have some kind of career to emerge back to.
Now I'm looking forward to being able to devote more time and focus to my teaching and research, and deploying the many things I have learned over the last six years to be better at my day job.
