Programme Leadership

[tinselvestsparklepants]

I was asked to step in as PL last year and have completed a full academic year. Worked like a dog, I'm so exhausted, but did a good job and get on very well with my team. A new, step-up job came up in our sept which I went for but did not get - and I get the feeling that they want me to stay as PL. There is a Lot more to this situation than just this - the politics is too complex to summarise quickly - but I'd like to ask what opinions would be on stepping down. I don't care about advancement, I just want to have a healthy life. It feels as if PLs just have 3x the work for... well for what? There is talk of all the amazing things our programme could be, half of me believes it but the other half is cynical and exhausted. Would I be an idiot to give up the position? I can't currently think of any reasons for staying other than my own pride, and not letting down next year's third years, who are a great group and don't deserve being mucked about.

Hi OP

Hard to say without knowing the full politics or full structure of your department.

In my department the expectation is that you stay in your citizenship role for three years unless there are very very good reasons for leaving early. In my department, a citizenship role being hard work (3x more than other roles) wouldn't be enough to justify moving on unless the person had taken several sick leaves because of the stress of that role.

Its about reciprocity. In your current role, you work 3x harder than other citizenship roles. But after 3 years, you'll move on to a an easier role, someone who's currently got an easy role will take on PL etc. So the idea is that everyone gets their stint in a shit, really tough citizenship post.

In my department too, leaving the PL role would come with the expectation that you'd move to an equally senior citizenship role. Is that the case in your department? If so, what might you move on to? Is there a risk that the new role could be even worse?

You should also be careful about timing. In my department, there's no way a PL would be able to move from the role so close to the start of the new academic year.

You said that you worked super hard last year - is this just the standard workload for PL in your department? Or did you have a specific task or strategy to work on which made it an exceptionally busy year?

I think there are a few options;

• Stick it out but create firm boundaries around your hours/tasks/workload and make these clear to your line manager in writing.
• Ask to move to another role citing your mental and physical health with support from relevant wellbeing policies. But be wary of what they might move you to.
• If that doesn't fly (it wouldn't in my department), take some sick leaves specifically citing the PL role as the cause of your stress. Then re-ask to move off the role again in a few months time.

Good advice from the above poster. I find programme leadership at UG level to be a totally thankless task. No workload model can accurately capture how much time it takes.
I think it depends on what career stage you’re at as to whether it’s worth sticking with it. I did 6 years and it was incredibly difficult.
I find lots of other people try to avoid it (for good reason) and it progressively passes onto those who need to do it for currency (eg to contribute to their case progressing from lecturer to senior lecturer).
Different at every institution, obviously, but I wouldn’t touch it again with a barge pole unless my employment depended on it. I managed to get away from it partly with some weight from occupational health, as it was clearly a key contributor to ill health/ work related stress.

Hi OP,
I think @KStockHERO makes some really good points here, but I wanted to speak about my experience too:
Last year I was pressured into accepting a HoD role because it was "collegial" and it was "the expectation" along the lines of what @KStockHERO describes in her post (and which incidentally I don't think it's uncommon in many departments). At some point in the conversations I said that no I didn't want to accept the role and I was told that this wouldn't be seen as collegial and that it would be very difficult for me to get promoted to professor if I said no.
So I said yes and I have been HoD for over a year. In the meanwhile, the three other colleagues who were all offered the HoD role at the same time as me and who all said no were all promoted to professorships (while I still haven't).
So my point is: yes there are all these "expectations". But what do they mean in practice? Does it mean you won't get promoted? Well there are promotion criteria, and maybe you can meet them without doing the role - and you yourself say you don't care much about advancement. Does it mean people will give you the bad eye for being uncollegial? In my department everyone is so awfully nice and scared of confrontation that even the worst shows of uncollegiality don't raise any eyebrows anymore. Would you be in breach of contract? In my case I haven't signed anything that commits me to being HoD.
My situation sounds quite similar to yours. I have noticed people are funny about change. In strategy days and the like everyone comes up with these "blue skies" visions, which are for the most part utterly impracticable because they require facilities and resources we don't have, or they require that we fire half of our staff and replace them with people with shinier, more fashionable specialisms. I have over time figured out that coming up with these "blue skies" visions is sometimes a defense mechanism that people use to justify them not changing anything, "oh this would be so difficult to implement that we shouldn't even bother". There's plenty of low hanging fruit in my department, small things that don't require revolutionary solutions but which all combined would certainly mean tangible improvements for both staff and students, and yet over the years they haven't been picked up because they are not part of one of these shiny "visions". I have made it my mission to takle as many as these as I can. And my reasons to do so are mainly two-fold, and mainly selfish:
a) The whole process of identifying things that can be improved, figuring out the mechanisms to do so (as with any uni, processes in mine seem impenetrable sometime) and triggering those mechanisms has a "problem solving" side to them that I find very satisfying.
b) I want to make my own life easier when I stop being HoD. Introducing some of these changes will certainly do so, as it will free me from having crazy schedules or teaching outside my specialism.