The Job I Never Wanted Was Exactly What I Needed

In march 2011, i accepted the offer to become the department head of the Engineering Education Department at Virginia Tech. In the history of the department, I would be the second, full-time department head and the first, permanent, woman of color. The fact that I was the first, permanent, woman of color department head should come as no surprise given the demographics of the engineering field. In 2017, there were 143 African American women engineering professors. This represents 0.5 percent of the 27,372 tenured/tenure-track faculty in engineering. Over the last forty-plus years, the percentage of underrepresented minority faculty in engineering has increased and according to the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) "By the Numbers," we make up 3.1 percent of all engineering faculty. Diversity and broadening participation in STEM have been a national priority for over forty years. Industry and academic leaders recognize that diversity, in all forms, is crucial to innovation and the development of new ideas. The presence of different perspectives and experiences improves productivity, creativity, and thus innovation.

With a start date of August 10, I had a lot to do in five months: find a place to live; pack and move; close out my life at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU); and most importantly, figure out what exactly a department head was supposed to do, as this was not a job I had ever hoped to have. I had been an assistant and associate dean at two institutions with my eye on becoming a dean. I had studied and interacted with deans for many years, and I had a strategy for what I would do when I finally became a dean.

After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to become a dean and with the strong urging of a colleague, I applied for this position. Before I dive into the experience of being the department head, I feel it is important to start with the preparation for the interview. I researched the department from top to bottom; I combed the website; I talked to some of the faculty in the department I had come to know through professional societies; I studied similar departments around the country; and I talked with friends who were or had been department heads/chairs.

When I went for the interview, I had a pretty good handle on the department, the successes it had experienced, the challenges facing it, and the resources (people, money, space, and time) available to move it forward. The department was founded in 1967 as the Engineering Fundamentals Division within the College of Engineering. The objective was to provide incoming first-year students a better understanding of engineering. The unit was viewed as a service division in the college whose primary mission was teaching. The majority of the faculty had MS degrees and tenure was based on good teaching and conference presentations.

In 2004, the division was renamed the Department of Engineering Education and a new doctoral program in engineering education was launched. In addition to the launch of the graduate program, an expectation was set that the department would shift its identity from a teaching-focused department to a research-focused department. A new type of faculty member was hired with a different set of expectations. Faculty were expected to have a PhD, conduct research on par with traditional engineering departments, develop and teach graduate level courses, and advise graduate students.

When I arrived, the unit was operating structurally as a department with teaching faculty, research faculty, and a new doctoral program. But the shift in focus created a major challenge; one department with two disconnected camps. Our collective task was to provide a foundation from which to begin our work toward one unified department.

As I began to understand the department, I came to realize that the decision to add a graduate program and attendant research expectations had been a topdown one, and that not all in the department bought into or understood how the new graduate program would or should be integrated. In my preparation stages, I also asked for the...