92 ORGANIZING ACADEMIC COLLEGES: A GUIDE FOR DEANS 9. Keeping two departments separate under a single chair and support staff Although not a frequent occurrence, as this case demonstrates, assigning a single chair to oversee two separate departments may solve the problem of a leadership vacuum. At a Midwestern research university, no one in the rela- tively small computer science department wanted to become the new chair, and the dean lacked the resources for an outside hire. He considered solving the problem by merging CS into Mathematics (from which is separated a few years prior) but received pushback from faculty in both departments. Over the intervening years, they had formed their own identities and could not see the benefit of again being under one roof. The dean proposed keeping the depart- ments separate, but placing the same chair over them (for which he raised the compensation by $5000) and sharing support staff. This fix was put in place, saving administrative costs. Each department maintained its own committees and operating procedures and adjusted quite easily to the change. “I believe a lot of this satisfaction has to do with the chair,” writes the dean, “as she has really created a sense of direction and home for all of them.” This approach has the potential to fail if it is perceived the chair shows favoritism in areas such as resource allocation toward one department over another. 10. Moving faculty from one department to another Sometimes circumstances arise that result in a shortage of faculty in a discipline or when an individual faculty member believes he or she is better fit with a dif- ferent program. But few faculty wish to change disciplines, and, for those who do, departments are loath to relinquish a faculty member as a faculty line often exists with them. The following case illustrates how a dean and his faculty arrived at a solution addressing the need for faculty dedicated to teaching in an interdisciplin- ary program. A medium-sized comprehensive university had been experiencing difficulty growing interdisciplinary programs that build on the expertise of existing faculty because their home departments were reluctant to allow their faculty to teach out- side their departments. Under the dean’s leadership, a procedure was developed for how to reallocate faculty lines internally that allowed a reallocation of a portion of a faculty member’s line to other areas of the College by providing replacements to the “giving” department, with the dean’s approval. For example, the Global Studies major had been growing quickly but lacked senior faculty appointments. The dean granted Global Studies a growth hire and the line was “traded” to Political Science in exchange for 50 percent of two senior faculty members’ lines. The dean consid- ered this solution “a win-win.”