Dealing with Dysfunction

A Book for University Leaders

By (author) Richard T. Castallo

Publication date:

29 June 2017

Length of book:

166 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781475834819

Dealing with Dysfunction provides a real-life view of a college department gone awry. A complete lack of trust exists between faculty, department chairs past and present; and particularly within the faculty itself. Name calling, sabotage, and an unwillingness to even be in the same room with department colleagues to discuss matters involving student and program concerns have become the norm. When pressed to participate in a meeting, one faculty member states: “You can make me come there, but you can’t make me say a word, and I won’t.”
Acknowledging the professionalism of the vast majority of college professors that staff institutions of higher education, Dealing with Dysfunction looks at the options a chair and dean have available to them when dealing with a cadre of professors in a department that unable to work together.
Richard Castallo sets the tone for his book pretty early: reading partly like a self-help book, part choose-your-own-adventure novel, the fictional book contains a series of case studies that you, a newly appointed department chair, navigate as you read..... The writing, while generally positive and constructive, can also be blunt and humorous....