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Lisa Chasan-Taber, professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences, has authored a new textbook that presents a comprehensive framework for department chairs who aim to cultivate and sustain high levels of research excellence.

“The Strategic Department Chair: Leading for Academic Research Success,” which will be published by Routledge on March 18, offers a valuable resource for negotiating the challenges that department chairs face as academic leaders. It outlines approaches for mentoring new faculty as they establish their research programs and prepare their tenure and promotion portfolios, offering step by step methods to strengthen early career success. In addition, the text addresses the real-world challenges chairs commonly encounter, including how to support assistant professors who may be struggling to gain traction in their research.

The book also explores how to reinvigorate the research trajectories of mid-career faculty and describes ways to enhance graduate student success in ways that simultaneously bolster faculty productivity. Throughout the book, case studies and examples illustrate how leaders can translate these concepts into effective administrative practices.

The former chair of biostatistics and epidemiology and associate dean for research in the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences, Chasan-Taber has a history of continual funding from the NIH and national foundations, including more than $14 million as principal investigator of NIH-funded research grants. She is the author of “Writing Grant Proposals in Epidemiology, Preventive Medicine, and Biostatistics,” and has published more than 140 peer-reviewed journal articles.

“The Strategic Department Chair: Leading for Academic Research Success” is available for pre-order now from Routledge.