Isaac Yu

Faculty are joining a new program to explore the ins and outs of academic leadership. 

Last week, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Tamar Gendler announced the beginning of her office’s Leadership Fellowship, which will seek to support FAS faculty who serve as leaders in their respective departments and programs. The inaugural cohort of 14 faculty will participate in regular workshops and coaching sessions over the next semester. Many of the selected fellows already serve in one or more leadership roles, such as department chair, leader of a large research group or chair of a faculty committee. Three are sitting members of the FAS Senate. Members of the School of Engineering & Applied Science, which recently announced it would form a distinct faculty, are also eligible for the program.

The fellowship looks to bridge the gap between the duties of a faculty member and those of an administrator. Though professors are usually trained solely in their academic fields, they are often called upon to serve on a wide variety of program and University-wide committees that call on a different set of skills.

“The academic career is very weird,” Mick Hunter, associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, wrote to the News. “You spend several years as a graduate student learning a discipline only to discover that much of that training is irrelevant to the actual, day-to-day work of being a university professor. Running meetings, planning budgets, managing people, mediating conflicts—I’ve had to learn how to do all of these things on the job, and I’m sure I could be doing them much more effectively.”

The News spoke to six of the program’s fellows, many of whom were self-nominated for the fellowship. Though the faculty expressed excitement about a number of the program’s goals, many said they were specifically excited about building skills related to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in their respective fields as well as communication and conflict resolution.

Some of the fellows are newer to their roles. Maureen Long, professor of earth and planetary sciences, became the chair of her department last year and said that she applied for the program to support the transition from teacher and researcher to administrator.

“It’s a whole new set of roles and responsibilities… you’re taking on a lot more administrative work and helping to drive the agenda for your department,” Long said.

Other fellows are long-serving leaders seeking to strengthen their skills. Many, in fact, hold several leadership positions around the University. Hunter is currently director of graduate studies for his department and also serves in leadership for the University’s Executive Committee and the ancient civilizations program ARCHAIA. Claire Bowern, another fellow, is professor and former director of graduate studies of linguistics and leader of the Women Faculty Forum. Economics lecturer Rebecca Toseland, meanwhile, is an FAS senator and director of research support at the Tobin Center for Economic Policy.

Harrison Zhou, a statistics professor who steered his department through a transition to a full-fledged data science program and served as chair until 2020, named communication as his skill-building priority. Being born outside of the U.S. posed additional linguistic and cultural challenges that he hoped to bridge through the program, Zhou said.

The fellows will be coached by professional leadership coaches, Gendler said. 

“The Leadership Fellows program helps us plan an ambitious future for the FAS: It enables us to support faculty who will steward our departments and programs in the years to come,” Gendler wrote in an email to the News.

Gendler became Yale’s first FAS dean in 2014.