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The academic ideal of shared governance requires significant participation of faculty in the decision-making and service aspects of a university. This is especially true at the department level, where a relatively small number of faculty must work together and contribute to the mission. As a result, one of the more challenging roles for department chairs is dealing with disruptive faculty. This article is designed to provide some insight on this challenge within the frame of managing difficult conversations. The authors begin with a presentation of motives and biases from the perspective of both the chair and the faculty. Efforts to build diversity and inclusion are then used to illustrate the process of managing faculty and building consensus. Finally, aspects of negotiation that might be applied to these relationships are discussed.

Academic integrity is a fundamental value, and maintaining it is central to achieving the mission of providing high-quality instructional programs. Cheating in academic settings is a widespread problem, and the perception is that the proliferation of technology in recent years has compounded this concern. This paper provides an overview of the issues related to academic dishonesty and the problems associated with cheating on college campuses. Academic misconduct in online courses and programs is discussed, and a variety of ways that technology can be used by students to cheat are described. Strategies are offered that can be used to decrease cheating and promote ethical behavior. It is the responsibility of faculty and administrators to take steps to deter academic misconduct and to strive to create a culture of academic integrity.

This article describes the implementation and evaluation of an initiative to promote active learning through facility renovation and faculty training. Twenty faculty representing a variety of academic areas from 2 departments participated in a 3-part active-learning professional development workshop series. Department of Health and Human Performance faculty (N = 14) teaching 19 courses and 416 of the students in the new active classroom were surveyed on their attitudes on the facilities, room design, professional development, and active-learning instruction. Consistent with previous active-learning research, there were subtle differences between student and faculty perceptions of the importance of renovation features, active-learning exercises, and philosophy of the learning process. The initiative was effective in helping predisposed faculty to implement active-learning experiences in their classes and engaging in more scholarship of teaching and learning, as well as enhancing the visibility of the department as a leader in active learning and the scholarship of teaching and learning at the university.

Undergraduate enrollments in kinesiology have grown over the past 20 years as the popularity of this major increased among students interested in the health professions. A panel discussion at the 2018 American Kinesiology Association workshop provided an overview of challenges facing kinesiology departments. Department leaders at four public universities discussed enrollment trends, faculty resources for teaching undergraduates, and budget models used at their universities. Comparisons were made with kinesiology departments at Big Ten universities to reflect more broadly on what is happening at U.S. public research institutions. At several universities, undergraduate kinesiology enrollments grew between 2008 and 2017, but at others, they leveled off or declined. In many cases, faculty resources have not kept pace with enrollments, leading to unhealthy student-to-faculty ratios. The panel discussed methods of coping with scarce resources for teaching undergraduates and how department leaders can use comparison data to stress the importance of adequate resources.

Undergraduate research is emphasized as a critical component of today’s science-based undergraduate education and widely accepted as an important part of the overall undergraduate education experience. While educators agree on the value of undergraduate research, significant challenges exist related to the design of the undergraduate research experience and the faculty member’s role in it. Additional challenges include providing high-quality research experiences that benefit the education of a large number of students while maintaining feasibility and cost-effectiveness. The scope of this review is to provide an overview of research and service-learning experiences in kinesiology departments at 3 institutions of higher learning that vary in size and mission.