22 ideas for department chair merit badges (opinion)

A running joke with my department chairs, when I was a dean, involved the awarding of merit badges for the accomplishment of a particularly thorny task that the outside world (outside of academia, that is) would not otherwise have known about. Generals rising in the ranks of the military accumulate ribbons. Why shouldn’t there be a similar accumulation of ceremonial badges for accomplishments on the way up the academic leadership ladder?

The granting of ribbons or merit badges will be ever more important in the AI era, in which leaders cannot simply speak about something but rather demonstrate and present the knowledge physically. As the Boy Scouts Merit Badge Hub states, “If it says ‘show or demonstrate,’ that is what you must do. Just telling about it isn’t enough. The same thing holds true for such words as ‘make,’ ‘list,’ ’in the field,’ and ‘collect,’ ‘identify,’ and ‘label.’”

For example: Consider details of just two of the 12 areas Scouts must master to earn the Boy Scout Bird Study Merit Badge:

When scouts earn a Bird Study merit badge, you will know they know what they’re talking about and feel comfortable with those scouts running a birding outing. You will feel confident putting matters in their hands.

Wouldn’t this approach be helpful for showing department chair expertise as well?

The Basic Badges: Survival Skills for New Chairs

I propose the list below as standard merit badges any department chair should be working toward. Following the Bird Study merit badge model, the specific tasks involved in earning the first badge are listed in detail. Follow this model and logic if you decide to document and award any or all of these badges at your institution.

Meeting Management Merit Badge (for mastering the art of running efficient faculty meetings while maintaining collegiality and reaching actual decisions)

1. Show that you are familiar with the terms used to describe meetings by doing the following:
   1. Sketch or trace a meeting room and then label 15 different aspects of a meeting.
   2. Draw up a meeting agenda and label six types of agenda items.
2. Demonstrate that you know how to properly follow an agenda, use the AV equipment in the room and use the hybrid camera, plus monitor for virtual attendees:
   1. Explain what the Roman numerals mean on an agenda.
   2. Show how to present a PowerPoint to both present and virtual members.
   3. Show how to see, in a timely manner, when a virtual hand is up.
   4. Describe how to bring a latecomer up to speed on an agenda item already discussed.
3. Demonstrate that you know how to use Robert’s Rules of Order. Show your dean that you are able to understand each chapter in the book, pointing out the debate rules, the tabling-a-motion rules and the majority requirements for each of the following types of votes:
   1. Motion to accept minutes.
   2. Motion to object.
   3. Motion to suspend consideration of an item.
   4. Motion to call the question.
   5. Motion to take up matter previously tabled.
   6. Procedure to select a second when everyone’s hand is up.
4. Observe and be able to identify at least 20 types of meetings. Prepare a field notebook, making a separate entry for each species of meeting, and record the following information from your field observations and other references:
   1. Note the date and time.
   2. Note the location and room capacity.
   3. Describe each attendee’s main feeding habitat and list two types of food that the attendees are likely to eat.
   4. Note whether the attendee is a tenure-line professor, career-line or part-time/adjunct resident of your department.
5. Successfully defuse at least three of these common meeting scenarios:
   1. The Filibuster Professor who “just has a quick comment” that turns into a 20-minute monologue.
   2. The Side Conversation Insurgents who start their own parallel meeting.
   3. The “Actually …” Interrupter who must correct every minor detail.
   4. The Passive-Aggressive Email Sender who “just wants to follow up on some concerns.”

Do you not feel comfortable with any department chair who has earned a Meeting Management merit badge running a meeting? Following are some additional basic badges that one can earn for adept engagement in the everyday and more occasional department chair work.

Budget Detective Merit Badge (for successfully tracking down and reallocating mysterious fund transfers and finding hidden resources)

Schedule Tetris Merit Badge (for fitting 47 course sections into 32 available time slots while satisfying everyone’s preferences)

Diplomatic Relations Merit Badge (for mediating between feuding faculty members without taking sides or losing sanity)

Paperwork Expedition Merit Badge (for successfully navigating a minor curriculum change through six committees and three levels of administration)

Assessment Survival Merit Badge (for completing a program review cycle without uttering the phrase “this is meaningless”)

Email Endurance Merit Badge (for maintaining inbox zero while receiving 200-plus daily messages during registration week)

Faculty Development Sherpa Merit Badge (for successfully guiding junior faculty through the tenure process wilderness)

Student Crisis Navigation Merit Badge (for handling everything from grade appeals to mental health emergencies with grace—and documentation)

Accreditation Archive Merit Badge (for creating and maintaining the sacred assessment documents for the next site visit)

Interdepartmental Peace Treaty Merit Badge (for negotiating shared resources and cross-listed courses without starting a turf war)

Conference Room Warrior Merit Badge (for surviving 50 consecutive hours of committee meetings in a single semester while maintaining consciousness)

The Advanced Badges

As department chairs move toward the “seasoned category,” akin to Eagle Scouts’ level of capability, these are the advanced merit badges department chairs should be moving toward:

Everyone Remained Seated Merit Badge (for successfully hosting a controversial speaker event where the Q&A didn’t require campus police, no one stormed out, everyone actually asked questions instead of making speeches, and the dean didn’t have to issue a statement the next day)

Viewpoint Diversity Navigator Merit Badge (for successfully resolving ideological tensions between the “universities are too woke” faculty member and the “universities aren’t woke enough” faculty member, while keeping both the university counsel office and the campus newspaper uninterested in your department)

Social Media Firefighter Merit Badge (for managing department communications after a faculty member’s tweet goes viral, while upholding both academic freedom and institutional reputation)

Soft Landing Merit Badge (for compassionately guiding a struggling graduate student toward alternative career paths while avoiding lawsuits, maintaining departmental reputation for mentoring, preventing faculty infighting about “standards” and ensuring the student leaves with dignity and future options intact)

Side Hustle Tackler Merit Badge (for successfully filling out outside employment forms for a professor simultaneously consulting for Google, running a resale textbook start-up and offering expert testimony, while ensuring university compliance, managing jealous colleagues and preventing the local newspaper from running a “professors don’t work” exposé)

Advanced Curriculum Shepherding Merit Badge (for successfully shepherding an interdisciplinary, multimodal, study abroad–required curriculum through 17 different committees without having it transformed into “just add one elective to the existing major”)

Fresh Blood Without Bloodshed Merit Badge (for successfully integrating an outside chair into a department that has been “led” by the same three faculty trading the position since 1987; includes surviving the “but that’s not how we do it” phase, the “well, in my day as chair” phase and the “I’ll just CC the dean on this email to help you understand our culture better” phase)

The King Has Voluntarily Left the Building Merit Badge (For masterfully orchestrating the graceful exit of a chair who has held the position since before email existed, memorized every bylaw and has an office containing 27 years of irreplaceable paper files organized in a system only they understand; successfully convince them that spending more time on research is a promotion, not a demotion, while ensuring they actually hand over the department credit card and graduate student admissions spreadsheet before leaving)

The “Reply All” Survivor Merit Badge (for maintaining composure during the dreaded accidental reply-all chain that encompasses the entire college)

And, finally (drum roll) the Ultimate Achievement: The Phoenix Chair Merit Badge (for successfully completing a term as chair and willingly agreeing to serve again)

This highest honor requires:

1. Completing all previous merit badges
2. Still believing in the mission of higher education
3. Retaining enough optimism to sign up for another term