Reference check questions for department chairs

A department chair leads colleagues who will be their peers again when the term of office ends. The job carries little formal authority and a great deal of influence: over teaching assignments, schedules, annual evaluations, the budget and whose case gets made to the dean. A campus visit shows how the candidate talks about the department’s future. References show what it was like to work under them.

Ask from more than one direction. A dean sees a chair’s results, faculty see their fairness and the department’s staff see their daily habits. When those accounts agree, the committee can rely on them. When they differ, the difference is often the most useful thing the reference stage produces.

Who to ask

• The dean or chair the candidate reported to, who saw their budget requests, personnel decisions and how they represented their unit.
• A faculty member who worked under the candidate’s leadership, ideally an assistant professor they mentored or a colleague who disagreed with them.
• The department administrator or business manager, who saw the candidate’s budget habits and how they treated staff on an ordinary day.
• A colleague from another department who served with them on a college committee, for how they argued for their own unit while working toward decisions for the whole college.

Questions to ask, by competency

Choose the competencies that matter most for the position and two or three questions from each. Ask every reference the same set, and when an answer is a rating, ask for the example behind it.

Fairness with colleagues

A chair hands out courses, schedules, service and often merit recommendations to the colleagues who chose them. Faculty read each of those decisions as a statement about fairness.

1. How did the candidate decide teaching assignments, course releases and service loads, and how did faculty learn the reasons?
2. Tell me about a dispute between two faculty members that reached the candidate. What did they do, and how did it end?
3. How did the candidate support assistant professors on the way to their third-year and tenure reviews?

Budget and scheduling

Chairs balance sections, adjunct lines, travel funds and equipment against a budget they rarely control, and the dean judges a department partly by the requests its chair sends up.

1. Describe a budget cut or a lost faculty line the candidate had to manage. What did they protect, what did they give up, and how did they explain it to the department?
2. How well did the candidate’s course schedule match student demand, and what did they do about sections that overfilled or failed to fill?
3. Given the resources the department actually had, how would you rate the candidate’s management of its budget? (rating)

Curriculum and program review

Curriculum changes, assessment reports and program reviews need someone to carry them through faculty meetings and college committees, often across several years.

1. Tell me about a curriculum change the candidate led. How did they bring faculty who opposed it into the discussion?
2. When the department went through a program review or an accreditation report, who did the work, and what happened to the recommendations?

Personnel matters

Complaints about faculty, slipping staff performance and student grievances usually reach the chair first, and the first response shapes what follows.

1. When a student complaint about a faculty member reached the candidate, what steps did they take, and whom did they involve?
2. How did the candidate handle a long-serving staff member whose work had slipped: what did they say, and what did they put in writing?
3. How did the candidate write annual evaluations for colleagues whose work was weak, and how did those colleagues respond?

Close the reference

End every reference the same way: ask whether they would hire or work with the candidate again and why, what support would help the candidate do their best work, and whether there is anything else you should know. The general question bank explains why the first of these matters most.

Checks a reference does not replace

• Rank, tenure and appointment dates with the faculty affairs or HR office at the candidate’s institution, including any earlier administrative role such as program director or interim chair.
• Grants and major projects on the CV, against the funder’s award notice or public award records, where the committee will weigh them.

Warning signs to follow up

• A dean who praises the candidate while the faculty and staff who worked under them answer briefly and carefully.
• No staff member on the reference list, for a candidate who has already led a unit.
• Decisions announced to the department without discussion, such as changes to schedules, space or workloads.
• An earlier administrative term that ended early, with no clear account from any reference.
• Accounts of departmental conflict in which the candidate is never part of the resolution.

One warning sign is a reason to ask another question, not a verdict. Reference check red flags covers how to check a concern fairly.

Questions to leave out

Ask only about the work. Before an offer, the EEOC’s guidance says an employer may not ask a third party, such as a former employer, any question it could not ask the candidate directly. Leave out health, medical leave, age, family plans and other protected characteristics. What to leave out has the full list.