department politics

[Sip]

... And Siggie, you're absolutely right. Some departments and some schools are worse than others. I tend to think that more solid and robust schools have less of this crap, but I could be very wrong.

In most top notch schools, the department chairs serve for at most 3 or so years. They keep rotating among the faculty. But usually being the "chair" doesnt mean much other than having a bunch of administrative duties and not being able to do research. Most of the chairs that I know of, pretty much stop research when they become chair and then try to get back into it afterwards.

Edit: I should add that I mainly know about Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Engineering departments ...

[Siggie]

In most top notch schools, the department chairs serve for at most 3 or so years. They keep rotating among the faculty. But usually being the "chair" doesnt mean much other than having a bunch of administrative duties and not being able to do research. Most of the chairs that I know of, pretty much stop research when they become chair and then try to get back into it afterwards.

Edit: I should add that I mainly know about Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Computer Engineering departments ...

Psych is the same. Research often stops or slows down at the very least (depends on program, if a phd insitute, there are probably grad students to do the work) and they stop teaching as well. At CSUN at least, people tend to chair toward the end of their careers so they can retire at the higher salary.

[Siggie]

I'm in Computer Science. Today an ex-advisor of mine told me that if I don't replace my current advisor with the department chair, I won't graduate. The students are tought because of the politics to be disloyal, to take sides with xxxxxxxs, to do shoddy science for the sake of crap papers, etc etc.

And Siggie, you're absolutely right. Some departments and some schools are worse than others. I tend to think that more solid and robust schools have less of this crap, but I could be very wrong.

Geez... where are you going to school? Department chairs are usually too busy to make good advisors. Wouldn't changing chairs also require you to change the research you're doing? Isn't that how you pick an advisor in the first place? The person whose research interests best match yours?