The Department Chair Leadership Assessment
Are you struggling to lead your department effectively?
Get your personalized leadership roadmap in 5 minutes.
You stepped into the chair role to serve your department. Instead, you’re drowning in administrative tasks that keep you from the work that matters.
Endless meetings that accomplish little. Faculty that resist necessary changes. Budget cuts that force impossible decisions. The constant tension between administrative demands and your scholarly work.
Whether you’re drowning in your first semester or hitting walls after years in the role, you are not alone.
The Department Chair Leadership Assessment gives you what actually works — strategies developed specifically for academic departments, tested with chairs across community colleges and small liberal arts colleges to R1 universities, and tailored to your institutional context and experience level.
Take this evidence-based assessment and receive personalized strategies to thrive as a department chair—without burning out.
If you're a new chair, you're likely feeling overwhelmed by the sudden shift from faculty colleague to department leader, managing competing demands without a roadmap.
If you're a seasoned chair, you may find that strategies that once worked are no longer effective in today's rapidly changing landscape.
You deserve better than generic leadership advice.
You need strategies that work within the complex realities of your institution—strategies that account for faculty culture, shared governance, resource constraints, and the delicate balance between administrative responsibilities and academic leadership.
Take the Department Chair Leadership Assessment and get immediate strategies that work for your situation. In approximately 5 minutes, you'll receive your personalized roadmap so you can make a difference as a chair without burning out.
Your results will include:
✅ Where You Stand - Diagnostic profile of your strengths and growth areas specific to departmental leadership
✅ What To Do Next - Evidence-based strategies you can implement immediately for your biggest challenge
✅ Experience-Level Guidance - Customized guidance for your experience level, whether you're new to the role or a seasoned chair
✅ Challenge-Ready Toolkit - Proven approaches for enrollment pressures, faculty engagement, resource constraints, and institutional change
✅ Community Invitation - Exclusive preview of tools and insights from my upcoming book The Department Chair Playbook and invitation to join peer discussions with other chairs
Jennifer Scott Mobley, Ph.D.
Ph.D., Communication, Ohio University
Certified Executive Coach, Center for Executive Coaching Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach
I’ve been in your chair.
For nearly a decade, I navigated enrollment pressures, faculty conflicts, and institutional politics while trying to maintain my research agenda and personal well-being. I know what it feels like to make decisions that affect colleagues’ careers and defend your department during budget cuts.
Now, as a higher education leadership coach, I help department chairs like you move from surviving to thriving. I’ve worked with academic leaders across diverse institutions including New York University, University of Chicago, University of Tennessee, Furman University, Case Western Reserve University, Commonwealth University, Colorado College, Colby College, and Emory University.
This assessment gives you what I wish I had as a new chair: evidence-based strategies tailored to your specific challenges and experience level.
I created this assessment to give you immediate, practical tools for navigating today’s unprecedented leadership challenges — and to help build a support network for chairs like you.
Your participation shapes the future of departmental leadership. Your responses contribute to research for my forthcoming book The Department Chair Playbook and help build the support system chairs need and deserve.