This post starts off as fun and makes a few serious points towards the end.
So you have come to a point where you are about to don the role of a Head Of the Department but find your seat a little shaky or your stomach full of butterflies, i can understand.
So you have come to a point where you are about to don the role of a Head Of the Department but find your seat a little shaky or your stomach full of butterflies, i can understand.
Take down these points and your life could be smoother in your position.
I have myself never been an HOD but was "stand in" several times. Here are a few duties that HODs are usually expected to perform.
At the start of the semester:
- Make time-tables, Distribute individual time tables to faculty, Get new supplies of chalk pieces(nitty gritties), attendance registers, dusters etc and get the new semester student lists made and supplied to teachers.
- Get the lesson plans from the faculty, advise faculty to make a unitwise question bank to be circulated to the students(preferably taken from past question papers- assuming your institute is not autonomous or deemed).
- Conduct departmental meeting before commencement of semester, send to university data of new students, analyze results of previous semesters and update student list.
- Ask faculty to make question bank and question paper for each internal, make a list of students ineligible for internals, make time table for lab internals, prepare lab exam time table and send for approval along with faculty list.
- Collect exam fees from students and make such students apply for exams online. Collect fine and issue hall tickets, make faculty enter internal marks in university portal.
- Make question paper for lab exams ready, allot subjects for next semester, take signature of students in internal marks list, take students options for elective subjects next semester, Plan recruitment for next semester etc.
- Arrange stock taking every semester, replace worn out equipment, make a departmental budget, manage finances of small expenses like chai paani etc.
Apart from all these tasks attend innumerable meetings ....this list of activities is not complete. You don't know, what will hit you from where. There are several activities that need to be carried out. In short life of the head of the department entails taking on a lot of responsibilities. Internal conduction and semester exam conduction may be given on a turn by turn basis to your department. In some colleges valuation work puts a lot of stress on your existing faculty. Colleges are always short of good hands. A new trend is to get accredited and it has increased pressure on faculties to document. When your faculty are not upto the mark in research then you will need a lot more documents to prove that they are doing good work.
Events like college day, freshers party, farewell and intercollegiate fests also involve a lot of coordination and management skills.
Concerned parents come to meet and ask for placement record and inquire about hostel facilities. They are also interested to know any additional activities that the department undertakes. They want to be informed about progress of their ward by SMS. They want a website to login and monitor attendance of their children. Some parents encourage their ward to be absent in a few days at the start of the semester. Students do not take attendance seriously. Many would not be having sufficient internal and average to attempt semester exams.
Faculties have to be encouraged to attend conferences and workshops. Conferences and workshops need to be conducted in campus. It is a daily chore to arrange alternate faculty for some teachers who are absent on that day.
Drudgery in the life of a teacher implies the teaching gets affected. Higher education in India definitely needs a rejig but aspiring teachers need to keep in mind that their life will not be a bed of roses.
Of course you get to address a class and you can speak your mind out to them.
If you are already an HOD i empathize with your predicament. If you are unmarried and young, A big salute from my side. There will be constant office politics and daily fights on trivial issues between faculty members just seem to blow up out of proportion. Pressure to publish, face a comprehensive Viva or open defense etc. I swear on my mother I did not know before I joined the job.
So my fervent request to smriti irani ji is to create a database of researchers/teachers at the national level and keep track of their affiliation with various universities either for granting funding or keeping a tab on high attrition of PhDs.
One more thing: Why the partiality of biometric attendance for faculties of private colleges who are punctual and no biometric for government school teachers who are on unsanctioned leave 25% of the time?
Higher education is going to undergo a shakeup and consultations are in progress on what steps need to be taken, with regard to the future of AICTE or UGC or Education for that matter. Teachers are held in high esteem the world over but in India the position is not sought after esp at the school level. This is because small but good schools(read as capable management) are not allowed to grow and cannot compete with profit minded investors called educational entrepreneurs. It needs a minimum of 10 crore to set up a school. A key requirement of schooling laws is they cannot operate in rented premises. This cuts out any possibility for a good teacher to teach and grow big. Only people with money can start a school. That means hard working graduate who aspires to grow as a teacher cannot be set apart from the lazy ones.
The question you must have in mind after reading this post should be what extra are the teachers doing other than teaching.. something that any graduate of any field can do and even in teaching how to ensure world class quality? The answer was quite evident from the start and that is research. Every little child in the country want's to be a scientist but after growing up and knowing what research is starts to hate/dread doing it(as was in my case). Please bear in mind that research is a very slow process... slower if you are lazier. Youngsters should be given the right guidance/literature to read in their formative years and with time I am sure would grow up to be giants in their fields of study.
Read about a revolutionary idea of Direct Benefit Transfer in Education in the post: Vouchers for the Right to Education
Events like college day, freshers party, farewell and intercollegiate fests also involve a lot of coordination and management skills.
Concerned parents come to meet and ask for placement record and inquire about hostel facilities. They are also interested to know any additional activities that the department undertakes. They want to be informed about progress of their ward by SMS. They want a website to login and monitor attendance of their children. Some parents encourage their ward to be absent in a few days at the start of the semester. Students do not take attendance seriously. Many would not be having sufficient internal and average to attempt semester exams.
Faculties have to be encouraged to attend conferences and workshops. Conferences and workshops need to be conducted in campus. It is a daily chore to arrange alternate faculty for some teachers who are absent on that day.
Drudgery in the life of a teacher implies the teaching gets affected. Higher education in India definitely needs a rejig but aspiring teachers need to keep in mind that their life will not be a bed of roses.
Of course you get to address a class and you can speak your mind out to them.
If you are already an HOD i empathize with your predicament. If you are unmarried and young, A big salute from my side. There will be constant office politics and daily fights on trivial issues between faculty members just seem to blow up out of proportion. Pressure to publish, face a comprehensive Viva or open defense etc. I swear on my mother I did not know before I joined the job.
So my fervent request to smriti irani ji is to create a database of researchers/teachers at the national level and keep track of their affiliation with various universities either for granting funding or keeping a tab on high attrition of PhDs.
One more thing: Why the partiality of biometric attendance for faculties of private colleges who are punctual and no biometric for government school teachers who are on unsanctioned leave 25% of the time?
Higher education is going to undergo a shakeup and consultations are in progress on what steps need to be taken, with regard to the future of AICTE or UGC or Education for that matter. Teachers are held in high esteem the world over but in India the position is not sought after esp at the school level. This is because small but good schools(read as capable management) are not allowed to grow and cannot compete with profit minded investors called educational entrepreneurs. It needs a minimum of 10 crore to set up a school. A key requirement of schooling laws is they cannot operate in rented premises. This cuts out any possibility for a good teacher to teach and grow big. Only people with money can start a school. That means hard working graduate who aspires to grow as a teacher cannot be set apart from the lazy ones.
The question you must have in mind after reading this post should be what extra are the teachers doing other than teaching.. something that any graduate of any field can do and even in teaching how to ensure world class quality? The answer was quite evident from the start and that is research. Every little child in the country want's to be a scientist but after growing up and knowing what research is starts to hate/dread doing it(as was in my case). Please bear in mind that research is a very slow process... slower if you are lazier. Youngsters should be given the right guidance/literature to read in their formative years and with time I am sure would grow up to be giants in their fields of study.
Read about a revolutionary idea of Direct Benefit Transfer in Education in the post: Vouchers for the Right to Education
