Fall 2024 Dates and Deadlines
- Sept. 15: Program Assessment Reports for 2023-2024 due on Watermark
- Oct. 15: Program Assessment Plans for 2024-2025 due on Watermark
- Oct. 24: Optional Chairs Special Topics meeting on using Informer5 to examine enrollment data from previous semesters. Use this form to sign up.
- Nov. 15: Course Scheduling Spreadsheets for 2025-2026 due (email registrar@allegheny.edu and provost@allegheny.edu when ready)
Assessment & Data
Assessment
See the Assessment page and the Assessment @ Allegheny site.
Contact Associate Provost Peter Bradley (pbradley@allegheny.edu) with any questions.
Data
See the Institutional Effectiveness site.
To request data or propose a research questions, use the WebHelp system and select Academic Reporting as the category.
Chairs Meetings and Workshops
Chairs Meetings
May 2024 Chairs Workshop Materials
May 2023 Chairs Workshop Materials
- Strategic Planning Updates
- Classroom Observation Guidelines
- Assessment
- Difficult Conversations
- End of Year Tasks (including chair transitions)
- Workshop for New Chairs
Chair Responsibilities
In short, department chairs are responsible for:
- leading their department by fostering a positive climate and facilitating long-range planning and innovation;
- acting as a departmental representative and liaison;
- overseeing departmental staff and faculty and managing personnel issues;
- handling student or parental concerns and complaints;
- handling and keeping RSE narratives;
- managing faculty development and evaluation;
- calling and running department meetings;
- managing course scheduling;
- certifying minors;
- approving transfer credit;
- managing and overseeing departmental facilities; and
- managing the departmental budget.
For more information, see the Chair Responsibilities in Section 2.6 of the Faculty Handbook.
Quick Links
Course Scheduling
Quick Links
Sample Templates
Departmental Budgets
- Budget Training Slides – March 2023
- Drilling Down Instructions
Directories & Lists
- A-Z Resources
- Academic Department and Program Directory (includes department locations and chairs, program coordinators, and building coordinators)
- Building Contacts
- College Committees
- Employee Directory
- President’s Cabinet
- Provost’s Council
- Provost’s Office
Hiring, Tenure, & Promotion
See also the Tenure & Promotion page
Hiring
Classroom Observations
- Classroom Observation Minimum Expectations (Faculty Handbook, Section 2.6.3)
- Classroom Observation Overview (Sept. 2024)
- Classroom Observation Template (Sept. 2024)
- FRC Teaching Observation Recommendations (Fall 2023)
- Departmental Observation Policies
Faculty Evaluation Process
- Section 5.2 Faculty Appointments
- Section 5.3 Guidelines for Promotion to Professor
- Section 5.6 Full-time NTTR Positions
- Tenure and Promotion Timeline (Sept. 2024)
Interfolio
- Interfolio login screen (select Sign in with Partner Institution)
- Interfolio Guide
RSEs
Writing Review Letters
New Chairs Resources
Getting Started
- Your department should have a department shared drive and a chair shared drive. During the chair transition, the previous chair should add you as a Manager to both of these drives, which serve as the main repositories for all department materials. Take some time to familiarize yourself with their contents and reach out to the former chair if you have any questions.
- Take a look at your departmental Common Practices document and Classroom Observation Policy. If you can’t find your department’s observation policy, take a look at this collection.
- There are chairs meetings roughly once per month during the academic year and these are typically held over lunch on Fridays. You’ll receive a list of the dates from the Provost’s Office and they are also included in the Provost’s Office Important Dates calendar (see these instructions to add this calendar to your Google account). The list of meeting dates is also posted on the Chair Resources page.
New Chairs Workshop Materials
- Calendar of Chair Tasks (draft)
- Slides from May 2024 workshop
- Slides from May 2023 workshop
- Slides from May 2022 workshop
Reports & Data
- At the start of each month, you should receive a budget report from Financial Services. Your building coordinator also receives these reports. If you’re on campus, you can drill down for further details about specific transactions; see this document for more details.
- As a chair, you should be now able to look up any student in Self Service. One way to quickly find a student is to look up their ID number using Informer and then search in Self Service using this number.
- You should also be able to login to Informer 5 using your Allegheny email and password. With Informer, you can look up student information like ID numbers or advisors, run reports on class enrolment (current and historical), get lists of majors and minors in your department, and see which classes are being taught in your building. Your building coordinator also has access to Informer and can run reports for you.If you don’t yet have access to Informer 5, submit a WebHelp ticket.
Time and Task Management
As a chair, you’ll find yourself managing a variety of tasks. The start of your term is a good time to examine your current strategies for keeping track of tasks and implement new ones so that you don’t get overwhelmed. Here are some ideas:
- Bookmark frequently-used resources in your browser. You can also add bookmarks for files and folders in Google Drive since these have web addresses.
- Log in to Chrome and sync your profile across devices so that you have access to all of your bookmarks on any computer
- Use Google calendar to track meetings and plan your time.
- Organize and sync your Google Drive so that you can access it from anywhere. You can use folders, etc, as you would have with My Documents. Try not to keep important files on your desktop as you won’t be able to access them from other computers or devices and you may lose them if your computer crashes.
- Develop a todo list system and take time to plan your day/week/semester. See, for example, GTD for Academics.
Technology
Informer
- Informer 5 Login Screen
- Informer 5 Instructions for Accessing Additional Advisee Information and Academic Program Data
Shared Drives
- Overview of Department and Chair Shared Drives
- Shared Drive work session agenda
- Folder Checklist
- Sample Chair Drive Index File