Management Strategies for Engineering Faculties under Consideration of Current Developments in the Higher Education Sector

Abstract

Faculty management organizes the effective operation of a faculty and is responsible for all occurring problems. As the work will be done mainly behind the scenes, faculty management’s influence on performance and development of a faculty often is underestimated. The challenge for faculty managers lies in balancing the conflict between governing and supporting faculty members while being in an uncomfortable sandwich position – between the central university administration and the faculty members. The big ambition of administration should be to appear “invisible” for university staff, to work efficiently and to avoid a waste of faculty resources. Nevertheless, administration has a strong positon in a higher education institution. Its decisions about resources and facilities are able to influence teaching and research to advantage or disadvantage of a faculty. The paper explains typical tasks of faculty management and shows in which way it influences engineering teaching and research by using examples from the daily working practice. Additionally, author gives advices how to improve faculty administration at engineering faculties. Efficient faculty management can contribute to teaching and research immensely, and, as a result, decide about success or failure of faculty performance. Keywords: faculty management, administration, engineering education and research